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Creation Date
Spring 2025
Description
The Edwards Lab, where I conduct research, uses fruit flies (Drosophila) to model human cancer processes. Cancer cells form a structure called the perinucleolar complex which, as the name indicates, lies in close proximity to the nucleolus. The role of the perinucleolar complex, however remains mysterious. The complex forms around one major protein which corrals different RNA molecules. We discovered that the Drosophila version of this protein, Hephaestus, also makes a perinucleolar complex but in otherwise normal cells. This version allows the complex to be studied in non-pathological tissue. Here a cell sheet is shown at high resolution with four components labeled: the blue shows DNA; green, Hephaestus; red, the nucleolus (ribosome factory); purple, nuclear envelope. We find the Hephaestus-labeled perinucleolar complex is tightly bound to the nucleolus with no detectable overlap or separation indicating a physical linkage between them. This work allows us to further investigate the perinucleolar complex assembly and function using genetic methods. [Image collected using the ISU Confocal Microscope Facility.