Seeing the Invisible

The biological processes Emily Spaulding, Ph.D., believes may be compromised by neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer’s are almost impossibly small. Her investigations target proteins that nest in liquid layers deep inside a living cell — a dynamic that unfolds in a space more than a thousand times thinner than a human hair.

Advanced imaging systems in the Light Microscopy Facility enable her to peer far into these subcelullar worlds. She’s breaking new scientific ground with the aid of the LMF’s newest instrument, a cutting-edge microscope that allows the deep-tissue imaging of live animals that’s ideal for her work with a tiny, transparent roundworm called C. elegans.

With funding by the Maine INBRE program, all of the facility’s imaging systems are available to researchers at the Lab and across the state who benefit not only from the technology, but also the expertise of LMF Director Frederic Bonnet, Ph.D.

These resources are central to Spaulding’s work. She uses advanced gene editing systems to tag proteins in living worms with fluorescent molecules, then brings them to the LMF to observe those proteins in real time, something difficult with conventional microscopes and impossible with fixed tissue samples.

“The proteins that we study undergo a process called phase-separation; they’re dynamic and fluid, sort of like the globules you see floating around in a lava lamp,” she says. “When you’re looking at fixed tissues, you miss out on the dynamic nature of these proteins that we can now see in a living animal.”

With the right animal model and the right instrument, she was able to view those liquid layers as no one ever had, learning that their nature was not quite what anyone had thought. Her work, and the LMF, are focusing a powerful new lens on the effort to understand degenerative disease.