Understanding how genetic variants disrupt kidney development is critical for uncovering the mechanisms underlying congenital kidney diseases. Join Rachel Miller and Adrian Romero Mora from the Miller Lab as they share how their team uses HCR™ technology and the vertebrate model Xenopus laevis to investigate nephron development and model human kidney disorders.

The embryonic frog kidney, known as the pronephros, contains a single nephron with conserved segmentation and cell types, providing a simple and powerful system for studying nephrogenesis. In this webinar, the Miller Lab will demonstrate how HCR™ imaging enables visualization of gene expression within the developing kidney and mapping of transcripts to specific nephron segments.

They will highlight their work examining the developmental role of TP53, where HCR™ imaging revealed spatial gene expression across kidney cell types and helped demonstrate how pathogenic TP53 variants disrupt kidney morphogenesis in a Xenopus model of Li-Fraumeni syndrome. The presenters will also share ongoing research using HCR™-based segmentation of the nephron to investigate how genes associated with congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT) affect nephron patterning.

Together, these studies illustrate how spatial transcriptomic tools can be applied in vertebrate models to connect gene function, tissue patterning, and human disease.