Dr. Matthias HABERL
Charité Berlin
Website Haberl-Lab
Programm
"Organization principles of the neuronal ultrastructure revealed with 3D electron microscopy"
Form and function of neurons are intricately linked. Long axons reach far away targets and dendrites branch wide to integrate signals, allowing neurons to form an extremely dense network to process external stimuli. While we are gaining a better understanding of the rules of circuit wiring, at the intracellular level we still lack an understanding about which features are random, which are controlled organization and which are cell type specific. Reconstructions of the neuronal ultrastructure is a multiscale problem spanning from the few nm-scale of ER diameter to the dimension of cells and neuronal projections. We imaged large-scale 3D EM volumes of the rodent cerebellum and also performed electron tomography on high-pressure frozen tissue. We reconstructed the neuronal ultrastructure of different cell types, focusing on the ER, mitochondria and membrane contact sites, to then characterize the intracellular organization in detail. At the gross level organization, we found that the intracellular composite of organelles is a cell type specific feature, with large differences between cerebellar cell types. At the fine level organization, we found ultrastructural domains of ER and mitochondria hotspots within Purkinje cells. We expect that our cellular maps will facilitate future studies in health, aging and disease to characterize defined features, by developing a framework for quantitative analysis of the neuronal ultrastructure.
Host: Thomas STEINKELLNER
Contact for questions: Helmut KUBISTA