Biology subjects

Sweat, S. C.

Publications and source records attributed to Sweat, S. C..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Longitudinal Assessment of Fluorescence Stability Shows Fluorescence Intensity Decreases Over Time: Implications for Fluorescence Microscopy Studies

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is one of the most widely used techniques across basic, translational, and clinical sciences. Key considerations need to be made to achieve reliable and robust IHC staining, however what has been understudied is the stability of IHC signal intensity over time. Changes in signal intensity over time have significant implications for data analysis and interpretation and ultimately impact scientific conclusions. In order to explore changes in IHC signal, the stability of fluorescence intensity was assessed over the course of six weeks using widefield or confocal microscopy. Results indicate that fluorescence intensity can decrease over this time course and that whether this decrease occurs and to what extent is influenced by the selection of the primary antibody as well as that of the secondary antibody, primary-secondary antibody combination, and utilization of chemical staining versus IHC staining. This investigation reinforces best practices for imaging fluorescent staining to ensure accurate and reliable data collection, be it for cell counting, assessing protein expression levels, or marker colocalization.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Microglial elimination of dopamine D1 receptors defines sex-specific changes in nucleus accumbens development and social play behavior during adolescence

Adolescence is a developmental period in which the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward circuitry of the brain, including the nucleus accumbens (NAc), undergoes significant developmental plasticity and neural circuit maturation. Dopamine D1 receptors (D1rs) in the NAc have recently been demonstrated to be critical modulators of social behavior, but how these receptors are regulated in adolescence to mediate social behavior is not well understood. In this report, we used multi-plexed immunohistochemistry with volumetric reconstructions, co-immunoprecipitation, ex vivo, and in vivo stereotaxic, microglial manipulation, and social behavior assessment to demonstrate that microglia and complement-mediated phagocytic activity shapes sex-specific NAc development. Moreover, we report for the first time that microglia-mediated phagocytosis is required for natural developmental changes in behavior, specifically, adolescent male social play behavior. These data have broad implications for understanding how experience interacts with the developing reward circuity, sex-specific responses to stimuli in adolescence, and how neuropsychiatric disorders may arise in a sexually dimorphic manner.

neuroscience↗