Quintay alumni meet-up at the #ICDB2025 meeting in Puerto Rico 🇵🇷
Always great to meet with the Latin American community working in developmental biology around the world 😃
@devbioquintay.bsky.social
@mayorlab.bsky.social

Altogether, we propose that adhesion between the tracheal trunks and the epidermis are important for the development of both tissues. While we thought these interactions would allow trunks to move dorsally, we now see them as stabilizing points that ensure an even displacement of the trunks (11/13)

Finally, we did the opposite: We altered the rate of dorsal closure and looked at what happened to the trunks. Again, we found wavy tracheal trunks that followed the movements of the epidermis (9/13)

We degraded beta-integrin in the tracheal system using nanobodies. Again, we saw the wavy phenotype in the trunks. To our surprise this also affected the speed of dorsal closure, suggesting that the adhesion of the trunks to the epidermis influences epidermal development (8/13)

To test the relevance of trachea-epidermis interactions, we did several things. We over-expressed ECM-degrading enzymes in tendon cells and looked at the effect on tracheal trunks. To our surprise, trunks still moved dorsally, but now they acquired a wavy morphology. It didn't make sense..! (7/13)

We visited @embl.org thanks to @eurobioimaging.bsky.social to cut these protrusions using lasers. We found they were under tension, which supported a they had a mechanical function (6/13)

If these protruding cells of the trunks adhered to tendon cells, we should see them at regular intervals. We went back to our MuVi-SPIM data and corroborated this was the case (5/13)

We did electron microscopy and indeed, we found contact! This was a super exciting moment for us (:
Contact between the epidermis and the trunks only took place at the segment borders, where tendon cells are found. This made sense; tendon cells form a thick ECM where muscles attach (4/13)

We noticed that a subset of trunk cells formed protrusions towards the epidermis, and we knew the epidermis was stretching dorsally during the stages we were looking at, so we wondered if the two processes could be coupled and if there was contact between the two (3/13)

However, we felt there was an unanswered question here: The dorsal trunks, how do they reach the dorsal side if they are formed on the sides? You can see this movement in this video we did with @microeos.bsky.social (2/13)

Very proud of my students, who did an amazing review on how morphogens regulate tracheal development in Drosophila!
We also talk about the tissue that produces these morphogens, the epidermis, and we propose it acts as an 'organizer' for tracheal development (1/2)

I showed off my #MarieCurie socks to Madame Curie at the #cellbio2024 stand for Institut Curie. She was not impressed 🤓😂

Excited to be in San Diego to attend #cellbio2024, my first time in this conference! If you are interested in #Drosophila, #ECM, #LiveImaging and #Biomechanics, Check out my lab’s poster on Tuesday at 11:30 on Board B138!

Cocol approves

#labart by @ferfru.bsky.social
Like if you also love #Drosophila!

Earlier this month, we organized a workshop on #Drosophila techniques. Students from around Mexico were able to attend thanks to a grant that we received from #GeneticsSocietyofAmerica. I just submitted a report about it, and it made me think how awesome it was to gather our community :)

Today we met at the uni’s botanical garden to celebrate the end of the (academic) year! This group represents 6 different #devbio labs from different institutions in Mexico City. Some travelled 1.5+ hours to join us 🥹
We do monthly seminars where our students present, we’ll gather again in 2025 😁