New Delhi: Researchers have developed a new optical imaging approach that can map a four-dimensional view of cell secretions in space and time as they are produced, while observing the shape and movement of the cells. The researchers of the University of GenevaSwitzerland, said their method provides unprecedented detailed insight into how cells work and communicate and therefore has “tremendous” potential for pharmaceutical development as well as fundamental research.
His method is published in the magazine Nature Biomedical Engineering. Understanding cellular secretions, such as proteins, antibodies, and neurotransmitters, which play essential roles in the immune response, metabolism, and communication between cells, is key to developing treatments for diseases.
However, current methods are capable of reporting only the amount of discharge without details of when and where.
“Collective measurements of the average response of many cells do not reflect their heterogeneity…and in biology, everything is heterogeneous, from immune responses to cancer cells. That is why cancer is so difficult to treat,” he said. hatice heightboss BIOnanophotonic Systems Laboratory, Ingeniery school, University of Geneva.
By placing individual cells in microscopic wells on a nanostructured gold-plated chip and then inducing a phenomenon called plasmonic resonance on the surface of the chip, they can map a four-dimensional view of cell secretions as they are produced.
Plasmonic resonance is when electrons in a thin sheet of metal are excited by light incident on it at a particular angle and then travel parallel to the sheet.
The researchers’ method involves a chip made up of millions of tiny holes and hundreds of chambers for individual cells filled with a cellular medium to keep cells healthy and alive during imaging. The chip is made of a nanostructured gold substrate covered with a fine polymer mesh.
When something like secretion of proteins onto the surface of the chip occurs to alter the light that passes through, the spectrum changes. Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor and a light emitting diode (LED) translate this change into intensity variations in the CMOS CMOS pixels is a semiconductor technology used in most of today’s chips.
“The beauty of our apparatus is that the nanoholes distributed over the entire surface transform each dot into a sensing element. This allows us to observe the spatial patterns of the released proteins regardless of the position of the cell,” he said. PhD in BIOS student and first author Said Ansaryan.
The method has allowed scientists to glimpse two essential cellular processes, cell division and cell death, and to study delicate antibody-secreting B cells from human donors.
“We saw that cell contents were released during two forms of cell death, apoptosis and necroptosis. In the latter, the contents are released in an asymmetric burst, resulting in an image signature or fingerprint. This never it had previously been shown in a single cell.” level,” Altug said.
