Announcements: Picture of the Month

A sea horse shaped Cardiomyocytes stained with alpha-actinin in green, actin in red and DAPI in blue. Image by Stephanie Dauth and Moran Yadid.

Ventricular cardiomyocytes from neonatal rats can be cultured on substrates coated with extracellular matrix proteins anisotropically. These cardiomyocytes can grow according to spatial cues provided by proteins attached to a substrate. Soft-lithography...

Using micro-contact printing techniques, extracellular matrix proteins can be deposited on substrates in custom shapes with micron scale resolution; by controlling ECM shape, pattern, size, etc we can recapitulate native tissue structure and alignment in...

Purified primary harvest astrocytes from neonatal sprague-dawley rat stained for GFAP, astrocyte (red), Nuclear DNA (blue). Scale bar= 50um.

“VICs and VECs” — Valve endothelial cells (VECs) are interspersed within an isotropic monolayer of valve interstitial cells (VICs). The monolayer is immunostained for VEC indicative CD31 (green) and VIC indicative alpha SMA (red) as well as dyed for...

Isotropic cardiac myocyte monolayer stained for actin (red), beta-catenin (white), and nuclear DNA (blue).

Micropatterned mouse ventricular muscle cells assembled into an anisotropic tissue showing nuclei (pink) and organized sarcomeres (orange). This organization recapitulates features of the native architecture of cardiac tissue.

Micropatterned ventricular muscle cells from a mouse illustrated various stages of cell spreading on a soft hydrogel that mimics the microenvironment of cardiac tissue. The phases of the moon inspired the design. Image by Yvonne Aratyn and Sean Sheehy...