Abstract：
:Pineal gland (PG) is a part of the human brain epithalamus that plays an important role in sleep, circadian rhythm, immunity, and reproduction. The calcium deposits and lesions in PG interfere with normal function of the organ and can be associated with different health disorders including serious neurological diseases. At the moment, the detailed mechanisms of PG calcifications and PG lesions formation as well as their involvement in pathological processes are not fully understood. The deep and comprehensive study of the structure of the uncut human PG with histological details, poses a stiff challenge to most imaging techniques, due to low spatial resolution, low visibility or to exceedingly aggressive sample preparation. Here, we investigate the whole uncut and unstained human post-mortem PGs by X-ray phase contrast tomography (XPCT). XPCT is an advanced 3D imaging technique, that permits to study of both soft and calcified tissue of a sample at different scales: from the whole organ to cell structure. In our research we simultaneously resolved 3D structure of parenchyma, vascular network and calcifications. Moreover, we distinguished structural details of intact and degenerated PG tissue. We discriminated calcifications with different structure, pinealocytes nuclei and the glial cells processes. All results were validated by histology. Our research clear demonstrated that XPCT is a potential tool for the high resolution 3D imaging of PG morphological features. This technique opens a new perspective to investigate PG dysfunction and understand the mechanisms of onset and progression of diseases involving the pineal gland.
journal_name
J Struct Bioljournal_title
Journal of structural biologyauthors
Bukreeva I,Junemann O,Cedola A,Palermo F,Maugeri L,Begani Provinciali G,Pieroni N,Sanna A,Otlyga DA,Buzmakov A,Krivonosov Y,Zolotov D,Chukalina M,Ivanova A,Saveliev S,Asadchikov V,Fratini Mdoi
10.1016/j.jsb.2020.107659subject
Has Abstractpub_date
2020-12-01 00:00:00pages
107659issue
3eissn
1047-8477issn
1095-8657pii
S1047-8477(20)30232-Xjournal_volume
212pub_type
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