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.