This summer, I am conducting research in the Matsuoka Lab at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, where we investigate how vascular and barrier systems in the central nervous system develop and specialize.
Using zebrafish as a model organism, the lab combines high-resolution imaging with genetic approaches to study the emergence of structural and functional heterogeneity across distinct brain regions, including the choroid plexus, hypothalamus, retina, and pineal gland.
My project focuses on the pineal gland, a midline brain structure that plays a key role in regulating circadian rhythms. Specifically, I am studying the presence and organization of primary cilia, small microtubule-based projections involved in signal transduction, across early developmental stages. Although primary cilia are known to contribute to CNS development and function, their dynamics within the pineal gland and their potential roles in shaping its microenvironment remain understudied.
So far, I have been characterizing wild-type zebrafish from 35 hours post-fertilization to 10 days post-fertilization to assess how extensively the pineal gland is ciliated during development. Using immunostaining and confocal microscopy, I am building a timeline of ciliation density and spatial organization to establish a baseline for comparison.
Over the next few weeks, my goals are to complete the quantitative analysis of ciliation across these stages and begin perturbation experiments to investigate the relationship between vascular development and ciliation. I plan to carry out double knockout experiments targeting ccbe1 and vegfab, two genes known to influence lymphatic and blood vessel development, respectively. These experiments will allow us to examine how disruptions in vascular patterning affect primary cilia formation and maintenance in the pineal gland. To achieve these goals, I will use transgenic zebrafish lines, confocal microscopy, image analysis tools, and established protocols for CRISPR-based gene editing. Through this work, I hope to better understand the developmental links between vascular identity, barrier function, and ciliary signaling in the brain.