The new technique offers a “street view” of the vital lipid membranes surrounding the organelles

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.November 18, 2020

The ability to “see” the inner workings of structures (organelles) within cells in real time offers the promise of advances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The dynamics of organelles drive the self-efficient micro-world of cells, but current super-resolution microscopy techniques used to monitor these interactions have limitations.

Now an advanced technique called SPOT (Spectrum and Polarization Optical Tomography) gives researchers a “street view” of the vital lipid membranes surrounding organelles and in doing so opens up opportunities to study the sophisticated world of lipid dynamics.

The researchers say this is a significant development, based on previous work on super-resolution polarization microscopy.

The research, published in Nature Communications was developed through a collaboration between the Sydney-Southern University of Science and Technology (UTS-SUStech) Joint Research Center for Biomedical Materials & Devices and Peking University.

The lead author, Dr. Karl Zhangao of the UTS-SUSTech Joint Research Center said that lipid membranes surround most organelles and play a significant role.

Their shape, composition and phase synergistically regulate the biophysical properties of the membrane, the function of membrane proteins and lipid interactions. However, it is difficult to observe such a level of complexity due to their similar chemical composition “.

Dr. Karl Zhangao, Head of the study Author,Joint Research Center UTS-SUSTech

By simply using a dye that universally stains lipid membranes, SPOT can simultaneously detect the morphology, polarity and phase of the lipid membrane by measuring intensity, spectrum and polarization, respectively. In combination with the lipophilic probes, the team successfully revealed more than ten types of organelles simultaneously and their sophisticated lipid dynamics.

Using the new imaging platform established at SUStech, the researchers observed the multi-organelle interactive activities of cell division, lipid dynamics during plasma membrane separation, tunneling nanotubule formation, and mitochondrial ridge dissociation.

‘This is the first time that researchers have been able to quantitatively study the heterogeneity of lipids within subcellular organelles,’ says senior author Professor Dayong Jin. Professor Jin is director of the UTS-SUStech Joint Research Center and director of the UTS Institute for Biomedical Materials and Devices.

“This is a very powerful tool for super-resolution imaging of the inner workings of each individual cell, which will advance our knowledge in understanding how cells work, diagnose when a” factory “or transport is malfunctioning at the inside the cell and monitor the progression of the disease, ”said Professor Jin

“With that information it’s not too big a leap to identify pathways for potential drug treatments, as well as examine their effectiveness directly on the SPOT,” he said.