Department of Biotechnology
inStem (Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine)

Tracking Mitochondrial Density and Positioning along a Growing Neuronal Process in Individual Neuron Using a Long-Term Growth and Imaging Microfluidic Device.

Publication Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

January 1, 2021

Journal

eNeuro

Volume/Issue

8/4

ISSN

2373-2822

The long cellular architecture of neurons requires regulation in part through transport and anchoring events to distribute intracellular organelles. During development, cellular and subcellular events such as organelle additions and their recruitment at specific sites on the growing axons occur over different time scales and often show interanimal variability thus making it difficult to identify specific phenomena in population averages. To measure the variability in subcellular events such as organelle positions, we developed a microfluidic device to feed and immobilize for high-resolution imaging over several days. The microfluidic device enabled long-term imaging of individual animals and allowed us to investigate organelle density using mitochondria as a testbed in a growing neuronal process Subcellular imaging of an individual neuron in multiple animals, over 36 h in our microfluidic device, shows the addition of new mitochondria along the neuronal process and an increase in the accumulation of synaptic vesicles (SVs) at synapses. Long-term imaging of individual touch receptor neurons (TRNs) shows that the addition of new mitochondria takes place along the entire neuronal process length at a rate of ∼0.6 mitochondria/h. The threshold for the addition of a new mitochondrion occurs when the average separation between the two preexisting mitochondria exceeds 24 μm. Our assay provides a new opportunity to move beyond simple observations obtained from assays to allow the discovery of genes that regulate positioning of mitochondria in neurons.

Alternate Journal

eNeuro

PubMed ID

34035072

PubMed Central ID

PMC8260276

Authors

Sudip Mondal
Jyoti Dubey
Anjali Awasthi
Guruprasad Reddy Sure
Amruta Vasudevan
Sandhya P Koushika

Keywords

Animals
Neurons
Mitochondria
Caenorhabditis elegans
Lab-On-A-Chip Devices
Neurites