But wait - did you spot the instances of stable microtubule orientation reversal in this cell?

We could even follow the fates of individual stable microtubules in these young neurons over the course of hours using StableMARK 😍

Remarkably, we found that stable microtubules are initially anchored at the centrioles and oriented plus-end-out in early neurites. They are then released from the centrioles, allowing them to reverse their polarity by sliding to adopt the minus-end-out orientation seen in mature dendrites.

And expansion microscopy let us precisely map the networks of acetylated (orange) and tyrosinated (blue) microtubules in these early neurites and near the centrioles!

Check it out for some beautiful super-resolution reconstructions of the microtubule networks in developing neurons! Using motor-PAINT, we can colour-code microtubules by their orientation to see how this changes during development. Cyan: plus-end-out (away from soma). Magenta: plus-end-in.

Hi folks! Lots of things changed in my life recently (!) but mainly (1) I finished my PhD in the lab of Lukas Kapitein focusing on microtubule stability and orientation in neurons and (2) I moved to Milan to start my postdoc with Gaia Pigino on tubulin post-translational modifications in cilia.