Dia and Ena in DC

Catarina Homem PhD work in Peifer's lab is now published in MBC..
It's a nice paper on Dia / Ena in dorsal closure with some nice imaging..

special issue of "cell and tissue research" on extracellular matrix

many interesting reviews about ECM...

Caspase FRET reporter SCAT3

This is the original paper on the SCAT reporter.
The UAS fly is available from Bloomington if anyone is interested..

Paper on laminins during fly development

new paper by Lola

New paper by Lecuit on JAK/STAT and actomyosin

paper...

Integrin:ECM in the Epithelium by Delon and Brown

A new great paper by Delon and Brown.
They are looking at the changes in integrin:ECM interactions in the epithelium (in the oocyte...).
These changes in adhesion causes a rotation of the actin fibres.
Interesting concept...

Fascin in hemocytes

Here's Brians paper on Fascin.
Few things they didn't comment on, such as the fact that fascin (singed) mutants are viable (though sterile!!).. So the flies can survive without the hemocyte migration?!
Secondly, the strong allele they use is also an integrin null.... Interesting!!

But besides that, there's some nice work in it...

Biophysical Modelling on Wound Healing

A paper came out looking at the biophysical properties during wound healing.
The take-home message is that the epithelia cells initially swell up, and then begin to migrate in a vortex motion... Interesting concept!!

Lots of interesting papers this week...

So there's a whole bunch of good papers out today...

1. Sergio's paper on Myosin II
2. Dahmann, on Tension and Cell Sorting
3. CP's review on Dorsal Closure and new theories
4. Zallen's opinion Junctional trafficking
5. Something on Midgut Turnover in Drosophila

I haven't read them all,.. so post when you've read it.

Haemocyte Reporters

There's a new paper out reporting new haemocyte specific reporters, both direct coupling of fluorescent proteins to the drivers, and using Gal4/UAS..

Apparently, they can label specifically the crystal cell, lamellocyte and plasmatocyte simultaneously..

Might be useful to get hold of these lines.

Mesoscopic Fluorescence Tomography

Watch this: link

This video shows a technique using pupae to image organ development in vivo...

Unfortunately not something we can do (yet..).

Cell Form and Physics Special Issue - Current Biology

Last week's edition of Current Biology (15th September 2009 - http://www.cell.com/current-biology/archive) has a very nice special edition section on cell form and physics, with good reviews on the shape of motile cells and cell shape changes during development. 

The editorial essay from Florian Maderspacher (http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)01608-X) is excellent, if a bit poetic..

Reactive oxygen stops haemocyte differentiation

This week in Nature there's a paper from Banerjee on how reactive oxygen (ROS) protects prohaemocytes from differentiation in the lymph gland.
Overall the results look a little bit preliminary, but a very interesting concept and some impressive techniques, including ROS stainings!!

Paul Martin and Tanya Shaw have a "Wound repair at a Glance" in JCS this week. Very nice review, and with a poster...