Journal
JOURNAL OF CELL BIOLOGY
Volume 195, Issue 6, Pages 1047-1060Publisher
ROCKEFELLER UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1083/jcb.201104057
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Funding
- Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, Culture, and Technology
- Astellas Foundation for Research on Metabolic Disorders
- Naito Foundation
- Cell Science Research Foundation
- RIKEN
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [11J11079, 19109003, 23229002, 23659032, 22116502] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Many cells die during development, tissue homeostasis, and disease. Dysregulation of apoptosis leads to cranial neural tube closure (NTC) defects like exencephaly, although the mechanism is unclear. Observing cells undergoing apoptosis in a living context could help elucidate their origin, behavior, and influence on surrounding tissues, but few tools are available for this purpose, especially in mammals. In this paper, we used insulator sequences to generate a transgenic mouse that stably expressed a genetically encoded fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based fluorescent reporter for caspase activation and performed simultaneous time-lapse imaging of apoptosis and morphogenesis in living embryos. Live FRET imaging with a fast-scanning confocal microscope revealed that cells containing activated caspases showed typical and nontypical apoptotic behavior in a region-specific manner during NTC. Inhibiting caspase activation perturbed and delayed the smooth progression of cranial NTC, which might increase the risk of exencephaly. Our results suggest that caspase-mediated cell removal facilitates NTC completion within a limited developmental window.
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