On May 30, Jing Hughes, MD, PhD and collaborators had their research titled “Scanning electron microscopy of human islet cilia” published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Human islet primary cilia are vital glucose-regulating organelles whose structure remains uncharacterized.” One useful technique to studying the surface morphology of primary cilia, is scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
In combination of SEM with membrane-extraction techniques, the authors were able to examine individual cilia on 15 islets from 3 human donors. Throughout analysis, they state that “the vast majority of human islet cells bear a single cilium each, a feature that we and others have previously demonstrated by immunofluorescence microscopy.”
Polino, A. J., Sviben, S., Melena, I., Piston, D. W., & Hughes, J. W. (2023). Scanning electron microscopy of human islet cilia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(22). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2302624120