Souzan Armstrong's research while affiliated with The University of Western Ontario and other places

... Similar to TIRF microscopy, the first application of WEFF microscopy was carried out on cell-substrate contacts. However, in recent years, it has been applied to image Langmuir-Blodgett films on a waveguide surface [9,42], measure cell-substrate distances at the contacts and solid thin film thicknesses [43], study kinetic cell behavior on a waveguide [44], visualize the solubilization process of the plasma membrane of a living cell [45], study the influence of thin polymer coatings on the quality of cell-substrate contacts for implant applications [46], dye distance mapping enabling to see the membrane bending between cell adhesions [47], and identify independent lipid raft domains in living cells [34]. ...

... Another approach for performing evanescent field microscopy is to use planar optical waveguides, where the cladding around a waveguide core has been partly replaced with the sample to be investigated [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. With waveguide illumination, the paths of the illumination and detection signals are independent and essentially perpendicular to each other. ...

... Evanescent waves have attracted considerable attention in nonlinear optics [23], optical sensors, and near-field optical microscopy [24][25][26][27]. The radiation force of an evanescent wave has been used to drive microparticles along the surface of dielectric prisms, channel waveguides, optical-planar waveguides, and optical nanofibers [28,29]. ...

... Evanescent waves have attracted considerable attention in nonlinear optics [23], optical sensors, and near-field optical microscopy [24][25][26][27]. The radiation force of an evanescent wave has been used to drive microparticles along the surface of dielectric prisms, channel waveguides, optical-planar waveguides, and optical nanofibers [28,29]. ...

... Specifically, P2X7R mediated movement of Ca 2+ has been shown to activate several MAPK proteins including ERK1/2 [61] and c-Jun-N-terminal kinases (JNK) [62], as well as PKC [63]. These play roles including regulation of RNA translocation, transcription factors, cell division, and proliferation [61,64]. P2X7R has also been shown to potentially act as a substrate for some protein kinases, with some tyrosine residues shown to be phosphorylated by c-SRC [65], which may initiate functions such as membrane blebbing [66]. ...

... Currently, the non-genomic aldosterone pathway is well recognized and extensively studied worldwide. The interaction between aldosterone/MR signaling and aldosterone/GPER signaling was first described in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) by Gros et al. (49), who later found that aldosterone-mediated ERK phosphorylation was inhibited by both eplerenone and G15 in MRtransduced cultured VMSCs or VMSCs transferred with the GPER gene (9). In addition, Ashton et al. (50) examined the non-genomic actions of aldosterone using pegylated aldosterone analog (Aldo-PEG) and showed that activation of GPER alone is not sufficient to cause deleterious effects on myocardial reperfusion injury; however, they further showed that raising reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels may enhance the MR-mediated actions of aldosterone during myocardial reperfusion injury in the heart, elucidating the functional involvement of GPER in rapid aldosterone/MR signaling. ...

... SP6 encodes a transcription factor expressed during amelogenesis and involved in regulating proliferation and differentiation of ameloblasts (Nakamura et al., 2004;2008;Utami et al., 2011;Muto et al., 2012;Ruspita et al., 2020). Autosomal dominant pathogenic variants have been published in two unrelated families in association with severe hypoplastic AI Kim et al., 2021b). ...

... Previous findings and earlier published work from our lab have demonstrated the involvement of ATP-stimulated P2RX7 in JAK2 phosphorylation; thus, we were curious to examine any possible interaction between P2RX7 signalling and JAK2 activation. Declined expression of pJAK2 and pSTAT3 upon KN-62 pre-treatment clearly validates the previous findings [52][53][54]. As phosphorylation of JAK2 and STAT3 was compromised upon P2RX7 signalling interruption, we next validated any effect of the same signalling on Mcl-1 production and, thereof, autophagy. ...