Says Wayne Brodland's web site: "The objective of our research program is to understand the causes of malformation-type birth defects so that effective prevention strategies can be devised."

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'Breakthrough' on seeing how tissues grow

a news release from the media relations office

A Waterloo-led engineering research team has discovered a breakthrough technique that allows experts to see how humans cells and tissues evolve and grow in the embryo.

Video force microscopy, as the technique is known, will allow medical researchers to visualize and quantify the forces that are at work in cells and tissues, including those that ultimately form eyes, ears, nose, limbs and other features crucial to embryos and newborns. These forces are produced by the movements of microscopic-sized tissues early in development. 

"These movements involve what can be thought of as a tug-of-war between various cells and tissues," said Wayne Brodland, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who led the international research team. "In a tug-of-war analogy, VFM technique allows us to 'see' how hard each member of each team is pulling at any given moment."

The new method is described in a research paper, entitled "Mapping the Dynamic Forces Driving Ventral Furrow Formation in Drosophila Using a Novel Technique: Video Force Microscopy (VFM)", published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Brodland said that during early embryo development, sheets of tissue move in precise ways in order to form organs and other critical structures. "Although much is known about the genes expressed in many of these tissues, the mechanical forces that drive motions has remained largely a mystery."

The new VFM technique is key to medical research because it is widely held that aberrations in these driving forces are the reason that tissues sometimes do not move in a normal way and a malformation — in short, a birth defect — arises. Common examples of such irregularities in humans include spina bifida, cleft lip and palate and cardiac septum defects.

VFM makes it possible to determine these forces from time-lapse movies. When applied to multi-photon images of Drosophila embryos, obtained in the lab of Nobel laureate Eric Wiechaus, VFM reveals exactly how, when and where the mechanical forces at work in normal and defective embryos differ. Drosophila is a favoured model system for geneticists and developmental biologists studying embryogenesis.

As a result, VFM provides an important new tool for investigating the causes of birth defects. "VFM allows us to learn the degree to which the driving forces are in error in cases where defects arise," Brodland said. "Our studies have shown that certain defects can be produced by irregularities in which the magnitudes of the driving forces are changed by as little as 20 per cent and for periods of time as short as a few hours. This knowledge is important for designing clinical strategies to prevent these defects."

The work was funded by the Human Frontiers Research Program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Canada and by international agencies.

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Entrepreneur Bill Tatham — the major donor behind the Tatham Centre — was on campus yesterday touring the VeloCity residence-cum-incubator and chatting with students at VeloCity's end-of-term exposition in the Student Life Centre. He's third from left (coat over his arm) in this cellphone photo by Reemah Khalid.

Notes at the start of a whole new month

The latest issue of Phys 13 News, published for high school teachers by Waterloo’s department of physics and astronomy, offers something special. “Every article in this issue,” writes editor and physics professor Robert Mann, “was written by undergraduate students working under the supervision of a faculty member at Waterloo.” Those articles include “Quantum Money: Physics for a Free Market Economy”, by Thom Bohdanowicz, and “Formation of the Ozone Hole in Polar Stratosphere”, by Edwin Lee. The issue also announces the winners of this year’s Sir Isaac Newton physics competition for high school students; topping the list is Albert Hu of Northern Secondary  School in Toronto.

Engineering Science Quest, which runs children’s summer camps on the main Waterloo campus and at several satellite locations, as well as March break camps, has announced something new: three days of winter programming, December 20 through 22, when local public schools are closed but the Christmas break for many parents has not yet started. “Much like our March Break camp, this is designed to be flexible for parents,” says Martin Scherer, manager of outreach activities for the faculty of engineering, “as they can sign their children up for one day, two days or all three.  The hope (next to getting kids excited about engineering and science) is that parents may find this a good alternative to finding day care or babysitters for the start of the winter break.” Details are online.

Waterloo’s Pharmacy building in downtown Kitchener (left) has received second-place “silver” honours in the 2010 Design Exchange Awards, announced last week and reflected in an exhibition that will continue through March at the Design Exchange in Toronto. “The awards,” organizers say, “celebrate the success stories achieved through close partnerships between clients and designers.” Credit for the Pharmacy building goes to Hariri Pontarini Architects and Young + Wright Architects/IBI Group. The judges call the result “a hybrid of school and clinic that sets an important precedent for future developments in this realm. The project incorporates a rich program, mixing faculty and student laboratories, lecture and seminar rooms, an auditorium, an herbarium, a family clinic, and a commercial pharmacy. Sited in the Warehouse District of Kitchener, the new building aided the rejuvenation of the downtown core with the inclusion of students, faculty and community. By the means of a poured-on-site concrete structure, illustrated glass skin, ground floor café and curved north façade, the design responds appropriately to the active urban surroundings, while sustainable features were implemented to solve urban construction issues that were imposed on the designated site.”

The Centre for Teaching Excellence and its spinoff, the Teaching-Based Research Group, is planning its big annual “Opportunities and New Directions” conference, to be held April 27-28, and has issued a call for proposals. The conference covers “the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and its Implications for Practice”. Says a memo from CTE: “We welcome everyone interested in this scholarship to join us for an exciting opportunity to network with like-minded colleagues from multiple disciplines and institutions and to engage in conversations about new research, work in progress, and emerging ideas. This year's conference will include two keynotes, a plenary, and theme workshops that explore not only how we do research about teaching and learning, but also how we make the results public in a way that will inform not only our own students but also those of our colleagues. Submissions for workshops, concurrent sessions, and poster presentations are invited to address this or other themes. We invite four types of proposals: 50-minute interactive sessions, 25-minute presentations, and interactive poster presentations and 90 minute workshops.” The deadline is January 14; there’s more information online.

The student life office is taking applications for members of a "training team" that will train next September's hundreds of orientation leaders. • The Pragma Council, advisory to the school of planning, held its fall conference November 25-26 with the theme "Planning and Politics: Shifting Ground". • Here's a reminder that the grand opening of the Waterloo Summit Centre for the Environment in Huntsville, which was originally scheduled for today, has been postponed to January 21.

CAR

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