I was hosted by the lab of Professor Ben Simons at the Gurdon Institute, which is specialised in the quantitative characterization of cellular dynamics across a variety of tissues, including the bile duct, skin, oesophagus, stomach, salivary gland, and pancreas. For this, the group has developed state-of-the-art mouse and tissue culture models to study stem cell dynamics during embryonic development, tissue homeostasis, tumour initiation and aging. My aim was to learn how these organs are collected during these studies and processed for whole-mount imaging.
To learn this, we initiated a whole-body KRAS tracing study to look at clonal dynamics on a multi-tissue level. I received hands-on training in extracting 24 different organs from a single mouse and got experienced in tissue-clearing techniques to make the tissues suitable for whole-mount imaging. This experience is very beneficial to my project on tissue-dependent cell competition, as the Vermeulen group has a strong foundation in studying tissue dynamics in the intestine, but mainly lacked the experimental expertise to expand these studies to other organ systems. This experience has equipped me with the necessary expertise to expand our research to a broader range of organ systems, significantly enriching the ongoing work in our lab.
Manouk de Jong
Center of Experimental and Molecular Medicine