Cellular micropattering has been increasingly adopted in quantitative biological experiments. A Q-switched pulsed neodymium-doped yttrium ortho-vanadate (Nd∶YVO ₄ ) laser directed in-situ microfabrication technique for cell patterning is presented. A platform is designed uniquely to achieve laser ablation. The platform is comprised of thin gold coating over a glass surface that functions as a thermal transducer and is over-layered by a cell repellant polymer layer. Micropatterns are engraved on the platform, subsequently exposing specific cell adhesive micro-domains by ablating the gold-polymer coating photothermally. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach is applicable under culture conditions, viable toward cells, and has a higher engraving speed. Possible uses in arraying isolated single cells on the platform are also shown. Additionally, based on those micro-patterns, dynamic cellular morphological changes and migrational speed in response to geometrical barriers are studied to demonstrate the potential applications of the proposed approach. Our results further demonstrate that cells in narrower geometry had elongated shapes and higher migrational speed than those in wider geometry. Importantly, the proposed approach will provide a valuable reference for efforts to study single cell dynamics and cellular migration related processes for areas such as cell division, wound healing, and cancer invasion.

In renal transplant patients, immunosuppressive therapy may result in the reactivation of polyomavirus BK (BKV), leading to polyomavirus-associated nephropathy (PVAN), which inevitably causes allograft failure. Since the treatment outcomes of PVAN remain unsatisfactory, early identification and continuous monitoring of BKV reactivation and reduction of immunosuppressants are essential to prevent PVAN development. The present study demonstrated that the developed dual-channel heterodyne-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor is applicable for the rapid detection of urinary BKV. The use of a symmetrical reference channel integrated with the poly(ethylene glycol)-based low-fouling self-assembled monolayer to reduce the environmental variations and the nonspecific noise was proven to enhance the sensitivity in urinary BKV detection. Experimentally, the detection limit of the biosensor for BKV detection was estimated to be around 8500  copies/mL . In addition, urine samples from five renal transplant patients were tested to rapidly distinguish PVAN-positive and PVAN-negative renal transplant patients. By virtue of its simplicity, rapidity, and applicability, the SPR biosensor is a remarkable potential to be used for continuous clinical monitoring of BKV reactivation.

Prior studies have established the necessity of an angiotensin-converting enzyme-related (ACER) gene for heart morphogenesis of Drosophila. Nevertheless, the physiology of ACER has yet to be comprehensively understood. Herein, we employed RNA interference to down-regulate the expression of ACER in Drosophila’s heart and swept source optical coherence tomography to assess whether ACER is required for cardiac functions in living adult flies. Several contractile parameters of Drosophila heart, including the heart rate (HR), end-diastolic diameter (EDD), end-systolic diameter (ESD), percent fractional shortening (%FS), and stress-induced cardiac performance, are shown, which are age dependent. These age-dependent cardiac functions declined significantly when ACER was down-regulated. Moreover, the lifespans of ACER knock-down flies were significantly shorter than those of wild-type control flies. Thus, we posit that ACER, the Drosophila ortholog of mammalian angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), is essential for both heart physiology and longevity of animals. Since mammalian ACE2 controls many cardiovascular physiological features and is implicated in cardiomyopathies, our findings that ACER plays conserved roles in genetically tractable animals will pave the way for uncovering the genetic pathway that controls the renin-angiotensin system.

Nanodiamond imaging is a new molecular imaging modality that takes advantage of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in nanodiamonds to image a distribution of nanodiamonds with high sensitivity and high spatial resolution. Since nanodiamonds are nontoxic and are easily conjugated to biomolecules, nanodiamond imaging can potentially elicit physiological information from within a living organism. The position of the nanodiamonds is measured using optically detected electron spin resonance of the NVs. In a previous paper, we described a proof-of-principle nanodiamond imaging system with the ability to image in two dimensions over a 1×1  cm field of view and demonstrated imaging within scattering tissue. Here, we describe a second-generation nanodiamond imaging system with a field of view of 30×200  mm , and with three-dimensional imaging potential. The new system has a comparable spatial resolution of 1.2 mm FWHM and a sensitivity (in terms of the concentration of carbon atoms in a  mm ³   voxel) of 1.6  mM mm³  Hz ^−1/2 , a 3-dB improvement relative to the old system. We show that imaging at 2.872 GHz versus imaging at 2.869 GHz offers a 1.73× improvement in sensitivity with only a 20% decrease in resolution and motivate this by describing the observed lineshape starting from the NV spin Hamiltonian.

Label-free Raman microspectroscopy combined with a multivariate curve resolution (MCR) analysis can be a powerful tool for studying a wide range of biomedical molecular systems. The MCR with the alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) technique, which retrieves the pure component spectra from complicatedly overlapped spectra, has been successfully applied to in vivo and molecular-level analysis of living cells. The principles of the MCR-ALS analysis are reviewed with a model system of titanium oxide crystal polymorphs, followed by two examples of in vivo Raman imaging studies of living yeast cells, fission yeast, and budding yeast. Due to the non-negative matrix factorization algorithm used in the MCR-ALS analysis, the spectral information derived from this technique is just ready for physical and/or chemical interpretations. The corresponding concentration profiles provide the molecular component distribution images (MCDIs) that are vitally important for elucidating life at the molecular level, as stated by Schroedinger in his famous book, “What is life?” Without any a priori knowledge about spectral profiles, time- and space-resolved Raman measurements of a dividing fission yeast cell with the MCR-ALS elucidate the dynamic changes of major cellular components (lipids, proteins, and polysaccharides) during the cell cycle. The MCR-ALS technique also resolves broadly overlapped OH stretch Raman bands of water, clearly indicating the existence of organelle-specific water structures in a living budding yeast cell.

Hyperspectral imaging is a powerful tool that acquires data from many spectral bands, forming a contiguous spectrum. Hyperspectral imaging was originally developed for remote sensing applications; however, hyperspectral techniques have since been applied to biological fluorescence imaging applications, such as fluorescence microscopy and small animal fluorescence imaging. The spectral filtering method largely determines the sensitivity and specificity of any hyperspectral imaging system. There are several types of spectral filtering hardware available for microscopy systems, most commonly acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTFs) and liquid crystal tunable filters (LCTFs). These filtering technologies have advantages and disadvantages. Here, we present a novel tunable filter for hyperspectral imaging—the thin-film tunable filter (TFTF). The TFTF presents several advantages over AOTFs and LCTFs, most notably, a high percentage transmission and a high out-of-band optical density (OD). We present a comparison of a TFTF-based hyperspectral microscopy system and a commercially available AOTF-based system. We have characterized the light transmission, wavelength calibration, and OD of both systems, and have then evaluated the capability of each system for discriminating between green fluorescent protein and highly autofluorescent lung tissue. Our results suggest that TFTFs are an alternative approach for hyperspectral filtering that offers improved transmission and out-of-band blocking. These characteristics make TFTFs well suited for other biomedical imaging devices, such as ophthalmoscopes or endoscopes.

Dengue virus (DENV) is one of the major infectious pathogens worldwide. DENV infection is a highly dynamic process. Currently, no antiviral drug is available for treating DENV-induced diseases since little is known regarding how the virus interacts with host cells during infection. Advanced molecular imaging technologies are powerful tools to understand the dynamics of intracellular interactions and molecular trafficking. This study exploited a single-virus particle tracking technology to address whether DENV interacts with autophagy machinery during the early stage of infection. Using confocal microscopy and three-dimensional image analysis, we showed that DENV triggered the formation of green fluorescence protein-fused microtubule-associated protein 1A/1B-light chain 3 (GFP-LC3) puncta, and DENV-induced autophagosomes engulfed DENV particles within 15-min postinfection. Moreover, single-virus particle tracking revealed that both DENV particles and autophagosomes traveled together during the viral infection. Finally, in the presence of autophagy suppressor 3-methyladenine, the replication of DENV was inhibited and the location of DENV particles spread in cytoplasma. In contrast, the numbers of newly synthesized DENV were elevated and the co-localization of DENV particles and autophagosomes was detected while the cells were treated with autophagy inducer rapamycin. Taken together, we propose that DENV particles interact with autophagosomes at the early stage of viral infection, which promotes the replication of DENV.

The effect of glucose on fluorescence of synthesized ZnCdS nanoparticles in the presence of glucose oxidase or in a mixture of glucose oxidase and peroxidase has been investigated. Behavior of fluorescence characteristics of ZnCdS nanoparticles with nonstabilized surface and coated with polymer shell is compared. It has been shown that, for uncoated ZnCdS nanoparticles, hydrogen peroxide formed by glucose oxidation with glucose oxidase causes static quenching of the nanoparticle fluorescence. A quenching mechanism is proposed in which surface centers of fluorescence, which include cationic vacancies, trap oxygen ions supplied by hydrogen peroxide. It has been shown that the linear Stern–Volmer plot has no threshold within the investigated concentrations of glucose. The sensitivity of ZnCdS nanoparticles to glucose, determined from the slope of linear Stern–Volmer plot, is maximum for polymer-coated nanoparticles and is 12.2  ml/mg . With peroxidase, there is a threshold concentration of glucose (160 μM) below which the nanoparticles become insensitive to glucose.

We present a cluster spatial analysis method using nanoscopic dSTORM images to determine changes in protein cluster distributions within brain tissue. Such methods are suitable to investigate human brain tissue and will help to achieve a deeper understanding of brain disease along with aiding drug development. Human brain tissue samples are usually treated postmortem via standard fixation protocols, which are established in clinical laboratories. Therefore, our localization microscopy-based method was adapted to characterize protein density and protein cluster localization in samples fixed using different protocols followed by common fluorescent immunohistochemistry techniques. The localization microscopy allows nanoscopic mapping of serotonin 5-HT1A receptor groups within a two-dimensional image of a brain tissue slice. These nanoscopically mapped proteins can be confined to clusters by applying the proposed statistical spatial analysis. Selected features of such clusters were subsequently used to characterize and classify the tissue. Samples were obtained from different types of patients, fixed with different preparation methods, and finally stored in a human tissue bank. To verify the proposed method, samples of a cryopreserved healthy brain have been compared with epitope-retrieved and paraffin-fixed tissues. Furthermore, samples of healthy brain tissues were compared with data obtained from patients suffering from mental illnesses (e.g., major depressive disorder). Our work demonstrates the applicability of localization microscopy and image analysis methods for comparison and classification of human brain tissues at a nanoscopic level. Furthermore, the presented workflow marks a unique technological advance in the characterization of protein distributions in brain tissue sections.

An electric field Monte Carlo method is used to study the focal spot of a stimulated emission depletion (STED) beam, radially and azimuthally polarized beams in a turbid medium as a function of the scattering coefficient. To consider the diffraction of light of the wave nature, the wavefront is decomposed into a set of secondary spherical subwaves according to the Huygens principle. From the simulation results, we can find that the STED beam can still form a doughnut focal spot inside the turbid medium. These simulation results are important for the feasibility study of STED microscopy for in vivo deep bioimaging. Similarly, the focal spot for an azimuthally polarized beam can also keep a doughnut spot at the focal plane in a turbid medium.