During my laboratory orientation at the very beginning of this project Linda Deitch made a point of drawing our attention to the two new Incucyte machines. These high-end machines are capable of real-time live-cell imaging and analysis inside the laboratory incubator. This means there is no need to open the incubator door & remove cells to check on their development. Once the Incucyte has been programmed, the images of the changing cultures are transmitted directly to the computer for analysis.

These images reveal the sensory neurons developing in the ‘plate’, they are not imaged as 3D organoids in this instance.

When I saw the sensory neuron time-lapse images collected every two hours over a weekend I could observe the cellular development taking place over time. Sara had collected some stem cell neurons and prepared them in the incubator. The time-lapse style imaging revealed the neurons developing and reaching out to each other in vitro. Their development is illustrated schematically in Mirella’s diagram from an earlier post.