Isabella Bicalho Frazeto
Quantification and modeling of embryonic lymph node organogenesis at the single cell scale
Team: Léo Guignard (IBDM) - Serge Van de Pavert (CIML)
Her background
October 2020 - April 2024 | CENTURI PhD student
2017 - 2019 | MSc degree in Bio informatics : Computational and Mathematical Biology - Université de Marseille (France)
2016 - 2019 | BSc degree in Biological Sciences. Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil)
About her PhD project
Lymph node (LN) formation requires hematopoietic lymphoid tissue inducer cells (LTi) to interact with mesenchymal cells at precise locations within the embryo, where they subsequently form aggregates. We have postulated that the peripheral nervous system outgrowth initiates the earliest events in LN formation. Indeed, preliminary data show that LTi aggregate morphology and cell density is affected in whole-mount stained mouse embryos lacking neuronal subsets. To understand the relationship between neuronal outgrowth and lymph node formation, we will develop new computational methods to reconstruct and quantify LTi aggregates and peripheral nervous system morphology at the single cell scale in the whole embryo. The reconstructions will then be used to develop a machine learning framework to systematically quantify phenotypes in perturbed mouse embryos. These quantifications will in turn allow to model the effects of neuronal outgrowth on LN formation.