Although it represents only a small fraction of body weight, the brain alone consumes about 20 per cent of the body\u2019s available oxygen and energy. Meeting this high demand depends on a dense and finely organized network of blood vessels responsible for delivering oxygen and nutrients to neurons.<\/p>\n
At birth, this vascular network is still immature. Yet it is precisely after birth that the brain undergoes major transformations: it grows rapidly, neural circuits are refined, and certain regions specialize based on sensory experience and environmental input.<\/p>\n
Until now, researchers had very limited tools to track\u2014over time and across the entire brain\u2014how blood vessels adapt to these changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had very detailed maps of the adult brain, but far less information on how the vascular network is established after birth,\u201d said Dubrac. \u201cIt was a bit like trying to understand how a city functions without access to its road map.\u201d<\/p>\n
To address this gap, Renier\u2019s team developed a three\u2011dimensional atlas based on a mouse model, enabling them to track\u2014with unprecedented spatiotemporal precision\u2014the development of the vascular network from birth to adulthood.<\/p>\n
For their part, Dubrac\u2019s team generated and integrated spatiotemporal transcriptomic data, making it possible to link vascular architecture to dynamic molecular programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By combining these complementary areas of expertise, the study reconstructs the brain\u2019s entire vascular network and analyzes its evolution over time, both structurally and molecularly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although it represents only a small fraction of body weight, the brain alone consumes about 20 per cent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[232258,10454,49,48,232261,232259,232260,97286,9078,994,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-618363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-alexandre-dubrac","9":"tag-brain","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-centre-de-recherche-azrieli-du-chu-sainte-justine","13":"tag-department-of-ophtalmology","14":"tag-department-of-pathology-and-cellular-biology","15":"tag-faculty-of-medicine","16":"tag-neuroscience","17":"tag-research","18":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}