Light Sheet Fluorescence Microscopy (LSFM) enables multi-dimensional and multi-scale imaging via illuminating specimens with a separate thin sheet of laser. It allows rapid plane illumination for reduced photo-damage and superior axial resolution and contrast. We hereby demonstrate cardiac LSFM (c-LSFM) imaging to assess the functional architecture of zebrafish embryos with a retrospective cardiac synchronization algorithm for four-dimensional reconstruction (3-D space + time). By combining our approach with tissue clearing techniques, we reveal the entire cardiac structures and hypertrabeculation of adult zebrafish hearts in response to doxorubicin treatment. By integrating the resolution enhancement technique with c-LSFM to increase the resolving power under a large field-of-view, we demonstrate the use of low power objective to resolve the entire architecture of large-scale neonatal mouse hearts, revealing the helical orientation of individual myocardial fibers. Therefore, our c-LSFM imaging approach provides multi-scale visualization of architecture and function to drive cardiovascular research with translational implication in congenital heart diseases.

Disease relapse remains the major clinical challenge in treating T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), particularly those with PTEN loss. We hypothesized that leukemia-initiating cells (LICs) are responsible for T-ALL development and treatment relapse. In this study, we used a genetically engineered mouse model of Pten−/− T-ALL with defined blast and LIC-enriched cell populations to demonstrate that LICs are responsible for therapeutic resistance. Unlike acute and chronic myelogenous leukemia, LICs in T-ALL were actively cycling, were distinct biologically and responded differently to targeted therapies in comparison to their differentiated blast cell progeny. Notably, we found that T-ALL LICs could be eliminated by co-targeting the deregulated pathways driven by phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) and Myc, which are altered commonly in human T-ALL and are associated with LIC formation. Our findings define critical events that may be targeted to eliminate LICs in T-ALL as a new strategy to treat the most aggressive relapsed forms of this disease.

Tissue clearing methods promise to provide exquisite three-dimensional imaging information; however, there is a need for simplified methods for lower resource settings and for non-fluorescence based phenotyping to enable light microscopic imaging modalities. Here we describe the simplified CLARITY method (SCM) for tissue clearing that preserves epitopes of interest. We imaged the resulting tissues using light sheet microscopy to generate rapid 3D reconstructions of entire tissues and organs. In addition, to enable clearing and 3D tissue imaging with light microscopy methods, we developed a colorimetric, non-fluorescent method for specifically labeling cleared tissues based on horseradish peroxidase conversion of diaminobenzidine to a colored insoluble product. The methods we describe here are portable and can be accomplished at low cost, and can allow light microscopic imaging of cleared tissues, thus enabling tissue clearing and imaging in a wide variety of settings.

Abstract. We study rational Cherednik algebras over an algebraically closed field of positive characteristic. We first prove several general results about category O, and then focus on rational Cherednik algebras associated to the general and special linear group over a finite field of the same characteristic as the underlying algebraically closed field. For such algebras we calculate the characters of irreducible representations with trivial lowest weight.

We prove an equivariant localization theorem for smooth quotient stacks by reductive groups X{G in the setting of derived loop spaces and cyclic homology. This realizes a Jordan decomposition of loop spaces described by Ben-Zvi and Nadler where the derived loop space of X{G is understood as a family of twisted unipotent loop spaces over an affine space of central characters. We then prove an analogue of the Atiyah-Segal completion theorem in the setting of periodic cyclic homology, identifying the completion of the periodic cyclic homology of X{G at res P G{{G with the analytic de Rham cohomology of X{G.In particular, we identify the completion of the periodic cyclic homology of X{G over the saturation rzs P G{{G with the analytic de Rham cohomology of the z-fixed points.