Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Morphological process of podocyte development revealed by block-face scanning electron microscopy

2016; The Company of Biologists; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1242/jcs.187815

1477-9137

Koichiro Ichimura, Soichiro Kakuta, Yuto Kawasaki, Takayuki Miyaki, Takahiro Nonami, Naoyuki Miyazaki, Tomoyo Nakao, Sakiko Enomoto, Shigeo Arai, Masato Koike, Kazuyoshi Murata, Tatsuo Sakai,

Pediatric Urology and Nephrology Studies

Podocytes present a unique 3D architecture specialized for glomerular filtration. However, several 3D morphological aspects on podocyte development remain partially understood because they are difficult to reveal using conventional scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Here, we adopted serial block-face SEM imaging, a powerful tool for analyzing the three-dimensional cellular ultrastructure, to precisely reveal the morphological process of podocyte development, such as the formation of foot processes (FPs). Development of FPs presents three morphological states: the primitive, immature, and mature FPs. Immature podocytes were columnar in shape and connected to each other by the junctional complex (JC), which migrated toward the basal side of the cell. When the JC was close to the basement membrane, immature podocytes started to interdigitate with primitive FPs under the level of JC. As primitive FPs lengthened, the JC moved between primitive FPs to form immature FPs. Finally, the JC was gradually replaced by the slit diaphragm, resulting in the maturation of immature FPs into mature FPs. In conclusion, the developmental process of podocytes is now clearly visualized by block-face SEM imaging.