April 2013: This Month in JoVE

Abstract

Here's a look at what's coming up in the April 2013 issue of Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). It's usually not permissible to have food in research laboratories because of contamination issues and potentially dangerous consequences. However, this month, JoVE features a video-article that involves cooking steak in the lab. Whitesell et al. present a method for measuring the tenderness of cooked beef, which is a significant concern in the beef industry. Because the angle of the steak fibers can affect shear force, the authors use a variable angle cutting box, which allows them to cut the beef so the slice is parallel to the muscle fibers. This allows accurate measurements of the maximal force required to cut a steak. In another article, we move from beef to human skin samples, such as those left over from facelift procedures. Hair follicles contain many different types of stem cells, so Yang and Xu demonstrate how to extract the hair follicles from skin samples and isolate neural crest stem cells (NCSCs) using fluorescence-activated cell sorting(FACS). The authors then demonstrate how to culture the NCSCs, which can potentially be used in regenerative medicine. In JoVE Clinical and Translational Medicine, we have another article involving human skin samples. Described by Dauch et al., this procedure uses immunohistochemistry on human skin biopsies to study intraepidermal nerve fibers in painful neuropathy. The three-dimensional imaging allows the visualization of morphological changes (such as axonal swellings) associated with neuropathies. This allows physicians to accurately diagnose small fiber neuropathies from skin punch biopsies. Finally, in the Bioengineering section, we have another novel microscopy technique from the Ozcan group at UCLA, who have already published three articles in JoVE. Their most recent article, from August 2012, demonstrated the use of a lens-free system to image white blood cells on a microfluidic chip (see Isikman et al. 2012). In the group's fourth JoVE article, Zhu and Ozcan demonstrate how to attach an opto-fluidic wide-field fluorescent microscope to any cell phone camera. Liquid samples are delivered via a microfluidic channel, and the cell phone camera can be used to record a video of the cells flowing through the channel. This procedure allows fluorescently labeled cells to be imaged and characterized with a compact and cost-effective cell phone camera, which could be very useful for point-of-care or field diagnoses. You've just had a preview of some of JoVE's highlights for the month of April. Visit the website to see the full-length articles, plus many more, in JoVE: The Journal of Visualized Experiments.