The research objective of my research team is to understand tissue development and the regeneration. This goal is particularly important in the stem cell research today. We hope to understand the principles how a organ form.
And this knowledge is not only help us to understand the nature, but also can be applied to help regenerative medicine. The challenge we face is to understand the molecular and the cellular process involved in these morphogenetic processes. So therefore, we need to have a explant culture system to analyze molecular and cellular processes carefully because it's not possible to do this in vivo.
To fill in this knowledge gap, scientists have developed different ways of organoid cultures. In the organoid culture, we will be able to take collective cell movement to see how cells interact with each other. We are also able to manipulate the cells so they will express different molecules to test the function of the molecules.
The unique approach we use is the chicken skin explant culture. Chicken skin is used because they are easily accessible from the egg and they form distinct feather buds, arranged the in hexagonal pattern as a readout for tissue patterns. There are three ways we do the culture, as you will see.
One is to hold the explant culture, allow us to take the movies or deliver molecules to perturb the system. Second, to study the contribution of epicilia or mesenzyme, we can take them apart and put them back. Third, to further challenge the ability of each cells, we dissociate them into the single cells and test how they come back to reorganize into the tissue patterns.
Through these approaches, we have been able to gain new understanding toward the tissue patterning.
