Kidney disease, both acute and chronic, contributes to millions of deaths every year and has no cure. The nephrons, the filtering units of the kidney, do not form after birth; so maximizing nephrogenesis during development is important. Nephrons are progressively lost during adulthood and are unable to regrow, but have some ability to repair. Each stage of mammalian nephrogenesis is highly dynamic, involving a highly complex interplay of movement among nephron progenitor cells of the cap mesenchyme, a population which undergoes self-renewal and differentiation. Exposure of these cells to different signalling cues from neighbouring progenitor cells influences their final fate. However, the role of nephron progenitor cell movement in driving nephrogenesis and cell fate decisions remains unclear.
While static imaging offers immense insight into cellular morphology, live imaging developing or regenerating nephrons in kidney explant cultures offers the opportunity to observe continual changes in migration and differentiation with time in both healthy and injured contexts. Our lab has established methods of live imaging and deep learning-based segmentation and tracking. This approach is expected to uncover novel insight into cell migration and differentiation during nephron development and tubule repair.
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