ISBN-13: 9783639155365 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 92 str.
Shear stress responsive genes in the vessel walls ofthe developing chicken embryo have a large impact onthe development of the vasculature. To investigatethe effect of altered blood flow on vessel formation,blood velocity profiles have to be known close to thevessel walls. However, the determination of the exactvessel geometry is difficult, because the vessels arevery small (10 to 250 micrometres) and almosttransparent. This thesis investigates severalpossibilities to stain the endothelium (the celllayer at the inner boundary of a vessel) of chickenembryo vasculature, using animals after 2-4 days ofincubation (HH14-17), in order to make it visiblewith fluorescence microscopy. The most suitablestaining methods are subsequently used to stain theendothelium of HH14 chicken embryo hearts and 3Ddatasets are acquired by means of confocalmicroscopy. Based on these datasets, geometric modelsare reconstructed and, using a numerical flowsimulation package, blood flow-induced wall shearstress distributions are determined. Subsequently,the results of the simulations are related to recentresearch data about expressions of shear stressresponsive genes of the endothelium.