Munenori Ishibashi

• PhD
• Research Assistant Professor & Associate Director of Biological Imaging Core at University of Houston

This project was inspired by the paper from Behrens et al (2016) who used e2006 to reconstruct bipolar cells. We thank Christian Behrens, Timm Schubert, Philipp Berens and Thomas Euler (University of Tübingen) for generously sharing data on blue cone bipolar cells. We thank Moritz Helmstaedter (MPI, Frankfurt) for hosting the e2006 dataset. We than...

Using serial blockface-scanning electron microscopy (SBF-SEM) and focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM), combined with confocal microscopy for the gap junction protein Cx36, we reconstructed mouse photoreceptor terminals and located the gap junctions between them. An exuberant spray of fine telodendria extends from each cone pedic...

Rod and cone pathways are segregated in the first stage of the retina: cones synapse with both ON- and OFF-cone bipolar cells while rods contact only rod bipolar cells. However, there is an exception to this specific wiring in that rods also contact certain OFF cone bipolar cells, providing a tertiary rod pathway. Recently, it has been proposed tha...

Mouse photoreceptors are electrically coupled via gap junctions, but the relative importance of rod/rod, cone/cone, or rod/cone coupling is unknown. Furthermore, while connexin36 (Cx36) is expressed by cones, the identity of the rod connexin has been controversial. We report that FACS-sorted rods and cones both express Cx36 but no other connexins....

In this study, we developed a mouse model of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) using streptozotocin and nicotinamide and identified factors that increase susceptibility of T2DM mice to infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). All Mtb-infected T2DM mice and 40% of uninfected T2DM mice died within 10 months, whereas all control mice survived. In...

Natural killer and dendritic cell interaction enhanced IL-6 production in Mtb-infected type 2 diabetic mice. Five control and 5 T2DM mice were infected with 50–100 CFU of aerosolized Mtb H37Rv. Six months p.i., lungs from Mtb-infected control and T2DM mice were isolated and formalin-fixed. Paraffin-embedded tissue sections were prepared and confoca...

Integrin LFA-1 regulates immune cell adhesion and trafficking by binding to ICAM-1 upon chemokine stimulation. Integrin-mediated clutch formation between extracellular ICAM-1 and the intracellular actin cytoskeleton is important for cell adhesion. We applied single-molecule tracking analysis to LFA-1 and ICAM-1 in living cells to examine the ligand...

Advanced single-molecule fluorescent imaging was applied to study the dynamic organization of raft-associated glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored proteins (GPI-APs) in the plasma membrane and their stimulation-induced changes. In resting cells, virtually all of the GPI-APs are mobile and continually form transient (~200 ms) homodimers (termed hom...