Noninvasive sizing of subcellular organelles with light scattering spectroscopy

Author

Fang, Hui ; Ollero, Mario ; Vitkin, Edward ; Kimerer, Lauren M. ; Cipolloni, P.B. ; Zaman, Munir M. ; Freedman, Steven D. ; Bigio, Irving J. ; Itzkan, Irving ; Hanlon, Eugene B. ; Perelman, Lev T.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Medicine, Harvard Med. Sch., Boston, MA, USA

Volume

9

Issue

2

fYear

2003

Firstpage

267

Lastpage

276

Abstract

A long-standing impediment for applications of optical techniques in cellular biology is the inability to characterize subcellular structures whose dimensions are much less than about 1 μm. In this paper, we describe a method based on light scattering spectroscopy that can find the size distribution of subcellular organelles as small as 100 nm with an accuracy of 20 nm. We report experiments using aqueous suspensions of subcellular organelles enriched in mitochondria, zymogen granules, and microsomes. From the observed light scattering spectra, we extract size distributions that are in excellent agreement with the results of electron microscopy. Further studies are underway to extract the shapes of organelles in addition to their sizes.

Keywords

bio-optics; biological techniques; cellular biophysics; light scattering; particle size measurement; suspensions; 1 micron to 100 nm; accuracy; aqueous suspensions; cellular biology; electron microscopy; light scattering spectroscopy; microsomes; mitochondria; noninvasive sizing; optical techniques; shapes; size distribution; subcellular organelles; subcellular structures; zymogen granules; Biomedical optical imaging; Cells (biology); Electrons; Interference; Light scattering; Optical microscopy; Optical refraction; Optical scattering; Optical variables control; Spectroscopy;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1077-260X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSTQE.2003.812515

Filename

1238990