Latest News Highlights from the Lab

June 2020
  • The lab was happy to contribute towards collaborative work with the Krachler lab (UT Health) to describe a computational method for analyzing biologically noisy data and detecting patterns. We show its use in detecting gut motility patterns.  Now out on BioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.29.123042v2
  • Proud to present in a pre-print our lab's construction of a Single-cell Atlas to describe neural crest derivatives in developing tissues along zebrafish! Long time coming and we hope this resource can help the field make some new discoveries! Congratulations to all authors, especially first co-authors Adam Howard and Phillip Baker!! Now out on BioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.14.150938v1
  • The lab has been fully relocated to our new renovated shared lab space in ABL! A massive THANK YOU to the entire moving & facilities teams at Rice, the Uribe lab and especially our fearless Lab Manager, Eileen Singleton!
May 2020​
  • Congratulations to Joshua Moore and Rodrigo Ibarra on passing their Part A exams and advancing to Candidacy!!! Way to go!
March 2020
  • The lab welcomes a new graduate student, Lucia Rivas! Welcome!
  • Our fish facility has been successfully, fully relocated! Thanks to all of the Aquaneering techs, Rice architects, the Wagner lab and Eileen Singleton, our lab manager for outstanding dedication!​
January 2020
  • Dr. Uribe received word from the National Science Foundation that the lab will be supported by the CAREER award, a 5-year research and education grant! Congrats to the lab all around! 
  • We are half way done with the 2nd phase of our zebrafish aquatic facility move to ABL, with ample space for zebrafish tanks, shrimp prep and embryology room.​


HOW DOES THE GUT BRAIN FORM FROM STEM CELLS?
The Uribe lab globally strives to understand how complex tissue systems are created from simple constituent components. This area, known as systems developmental biology, aims to increase fundamental knowledge of how living tissues, organs and, ultimately, organisms are constructed.

One current area of lab research focus is on understanding how the largest division of the peripheral nervous system, the Enteric Nervous System (ENS), is constructed during embryonic development from a stem cell population called the Neural Crest.  

​The ENS is composed of thousands of ganglia embedded within the walls of the gut.  Each ganglia consists of diverse enteric neuron subtypes and glial cells, which together regulates gut peristalsis, water balance and hormone secretions.  The number of neurons found within the ENS rivals the numbers of those found in the spinal cord, causing it to also be known as "the second brain." It is important to study development of the ENS so that we can understand not only how it forms and functions, but also to help us to understand how things go wrong in various gastrointestinal disease states (Hirschsprung disease, Achalasia), as well as neural crest stem cell defects, such as when neural crest become cancerous.  

During zebrafish embryogenesis, neural crest cells, a migratory stem cell population, migrate into the primitive gut in two chains (as depicted below in schematic and timelapse video), eventually surround the gut tube and turn into neurons by the 5th day in development in order to form the ENS.  Complex cellular, molecular, genetic and systems-level forces orchestrate neural crest transformation into enteric neurons that make up the ENS. Zebrafish are an excellent model system to investigate ENS development due to their rapid, transparent development, amenability to genetic manipulation and high-resolution live imaging.  As shown in the cartoon and images below, zebrafish ENS development is rapid and enteric neurons are easily detected as early as a few days post fertilization (dpf).  

Please see the Research Areas tab above for our current research endeavors.

Time-lapse movie: Neural crest cells, marked by sox10:mRFP (Red Fluorescent Protein), migrate in chains caudally along the gut tube during the second day in development. 
3D rendered image to show the gut tube of a 3 dpf larval fish.  Freshly born enteric neurons are shown by expression of Phox2b (green) and HuC/D (red).  
The Uribe lab is a member of:
The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC), through the BioSciences Department, Rice University profiles.gulfcoastconsortia.org/profilesystem/editprofile.php?pid=4356&onlyview=1
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The Gulf Coast Consortia Cluster for Regenerative Medicine and Single Cell Omics profiles.gulfcoastconsortia.org/profilesystem/editprofile.php?pid=3478&onlyview=1

The Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB), Rice University
ibb.rice.edu/ibb-faculty

Funded by: National Science Foundation, Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas http://www.cprit.state.tx.us​, Rice University, American Cancer Society and the John S. Dunn Foundation johnsdunnfoundation.org via the Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC)