Wrapping up her PhD in neurosciences in the lab of Dr. Florence Besse, Bruna dedicated her time to unravel the role of axonal RNA localization in memory formation. Her work has uncovered a mechanism underlying the targeting of RNAs to neuronal terminals of memory circuits and demonstrated its physiological importance for the establishment of long-term memory. In this workshop, she shared with us a useful tool available at the iBV, Imaris software, in which she developed a pipeline to quantify single molecules of RNAs in drosophila brains. The 3D models generated from confocal microscopy images allow a more reliable and efficient way to evaluate the distribution of different RNA species along axons, and can be applied to numerous other image quantification contexts, as it raised the curiosity of our club attendees.

If you’re interested in this topic, feel free to consult Bruna’s presentation on the iBV common server. Also, you can count with the invaluable help of Sameh and Baptiste from PRISM facility for your image analysis.

(By Bruna De Queiroz)