iii scientists contribute chapter to new book
Published: 2 July 2020
The Institute's Dr Julia Edgar and PhD student Rebecca Sherrard Smith have co-authored a chapter in the new book Axon Degeneration: Methods and Protocols, edited by Dr Elisabetta Babetto and published by Springer.
The Institute's Dr Julia Edgar and PhD student Rebecca Sherrard Smith have co-authored a chapter in the new book Axon Degeneration: Methods and Protocols, edited by Dr Elisabetta Babetto and published by Springer.
A collection of classical as well as innovative methods, the book is an authoritative guide that will help the scientific community tackle important questions regarding axon degeneration.
Axons are the cables that carry information between nerve cells, and also between nerve cells and peripheral organs such as muscles. As such, they are critical for normal neurological functions such as sight, speech, thought and movement.
Due to their shape and high metabolic requirements, axons are susceptible to damage in a wide variety of situations such as in spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease, and stroke, and the book provides detailed methods for studying their structure and function in health and disease.
Dr Edgar and Miss Smith's chapter, Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Morphometry of the CNS White Matter, focuses on methods to examine myelinated axons, the electrical wires of our nervous systems, using TEM.
The myelin sheath wraps around axons and acts in a similar way to the insulating material that surrounds an electrical wire. When axons or their myelin sheaths are damaged it can result in debilitating consequences for neurological functions such as walking, sight, speech, and thought.
Dr Edgar said: "By combining TEM - an advanced imaging method that allows us to examine these and other structures at the ultrastructural level - of white matter with morphometry, we can visualise and quantify pathological changes at the level of individual myelinated axons and their component parts, helping us understand what goes wrong in disease."
A proud Miss Smith, of the Neuroimmunology Research Group, added: "This book chapter is an important piece for me as it is my first publication in science, and comes following an unusual journey into academia.
"After my MSc in Immunology, I deviated into industry, working at Merck and gaining experience in TEM, but then experienced difficulty in returning to academia before being offered the opportunity to work in Julia Edgar’s lab on a voluntary basis.
"There I worked on transferring my TEM skills into CNS research, and with these skills and knowledge I was able to contribute to this chapter.
"Two years after beginning that voluntary work, I am at the end of the first year of my PhD here at the University of Glasgow, working with Professor Sue Barnett and continuing my work in CNS research.
"The date of this book's release is also meaningful to me as it marked three years to the day that I imaged and developed my first TEM micrograph. A full circle."
First published: 2 July 2020