So the real research project here is the induction of a so-called tunneling nanotube. What is this tunneling nanotube? Tunneling nanotube is a fancy name. It's not actually at nano Scale. It's first described in 2004. It's a very thin membrane structure between cells. It can connect cells directly. Before, when we talk about glial cell, we say between glial cells gap junction can be formed between two glial cells. And also we mentioned normally between neurons we don't have this kind of gap junction formed structure. And then tunneling nanotube, you can look at this tunneling nanotube structure as a prolonged gap junction. Between glial cells and between neurals. That can form between neurals. So this gap or prolong the gap or caught tube is not only found in neuronal cells. It's found in PC12 cells, hex cells and as well as other many other cells. So what does this tunneling nanotube look like between two astrocytes? This is the culture hippocampal astrocytes in vitro. And then the arrow indicates a tunneling nanotube between two It's very thin and then it's a what we call the hovering free. It means it's not attached to our culture dish or cover slip. And it's like a highway or bridge between two cells. If you touch the culture dish you can see actually the movement of this tunneling nanotube. And then when you grow cultures old, or your culture is under some stress addition. Some time you can see this kind of scene line structure between cells, but the first to see cell will do is to clump together they get into together. And then the second thing is from the clumps to the another clump you will form this kind of Same tubular structure. And so this [INAUDIBLE] nano tube can form between [INAUDIBLE] size, and [INAUDIBLE] size and also between [INAUDIBLE] size and the neuron. And then this struct if we stress the cell with hydrogen peroxide and then we can see more induction of this tunnelling nanotube, and then the essential of this tunnelling nanotube is membrane structure. We can stay this tunneling nano tube was a plasma membrane marker. And then we also see the movement, the material movement within this tube. So, what kind of thing can be. Can be transport within this highway with this kind of like a bridge between cells. Yeah, Golgi, Endosome, and even Mitochondria can be transported within this nanotube. Structure but the cellular organelles can be transferred within this tube with different speed. And how this structure can be induced is 53, p53 dependent. And then EGFR, the epidermal growth factor receptor is also involved in this induction. So what's the function of this tube of this tubular structure? So what we did is we make two groups of cells. One group of cell is transfected with red flowers protein. And then the other group, is green, fluorescent protein. And stress we can make treatment independently for the two groups of cell. For example we stress one group, we stress the red group of cell. And then we make a co-culture of this red cell and green cell. And we'll see this tube [INAUDIBLE] tube will grow from the green cell to red cell or from the red cell to the green cell. And will observe the material transfer happened from the red cell to green cell or vice versa. So our data shell the nano tube always grow from stress to cell from damage of cell to the healthy cell, not verse visa. And also the material transfer happened always from the damage the cell or stressed a cell to the healthy cell, not the other way. Okay, so now we. We know this nanotube is [INAUDIBLE] from P53 activation, UTFR activation is involved and then from this complicated pathway make the F acting. We just mention with the micro filaments of acting polamerites and then push membrane going towards another [INAUDIBLE] another target c,ell. So we propose the function of this [INAUDIBLE] nano tube. Is when a cell is stressed and the field is going to die, and it will grow this kind of tubular or channel-like structure to another healthy cell. And then get linked with another healthy cell. And I try to Give the material, or energy, to another cell. So although a cell is going to die. It will make the whole cell population live better. That is our hypothesis.
