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Facilitating trypanosome imaging.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Glogger, Marius 
Subota, Ines 
Pezzarossa, Anna 
Denecke, Anna-Lena 

Abstract

Research on trypanosomes as a model organism has provided a substantial contribution to a detailed understanding of basic cellular processes within the last few years. At the same time, major advances in super-resolution microscopy have been achieved, facilitating the resolution of biological structures in living cells at a scale of a few nm. However, the motility of trypanosomes has prevented access to high resolution microscopy of live cells. Here, we present a hydrogel based on poly(ethylene glycol) functionalized with either norbornene or thiol moieties for UV induced thiol-ene crosslinking for the embedding and imaging of live trypanosomes. The resulting gel exhibits low autofluorescence properties, immobilizes the cells efficiently on the nanometer scale and is compatible with cell viability for up to one hour at 24 °C. We applied super-resolution imaging to the inner plasma membrane leaflet using lipid-anchored eYFP as a probe. We find specific domains within the membrane where the fluorescence either accumulates or appears diluted rather than being homogenously distributed. Based on a Ripley's analysis, the size of the domains was determined to be raccumulated=170±5 nm and rdilute>115±15 nm. We hypothesize that this structuring of the membrane is associated with the underlying cytoskeleton.

Description

Keywords

Hydrogel, Membrane, Single-molecule fluorescence microscopy, Trypanosomes, Antigens, Protozoan, Bacterial Proteins, Biomarkers, Cell Membrane, Fluorescent Antibody Technique, Green Fluorescent Proteins, Hydrogels, Luminescent Proteins, Microscopy, Fluorescence, Protozoan Proteins, Trypanosoma brucei brucei

Journal Title

Experimental Parasitology

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0014-4894
1090-2449

Volume Title

180

Publisher

Elsevier
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (093008/Z/10/Z)
ME is supported by DFG grants EN305 and SPP1726. ME is a member of the Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen Center for Complex Material Systems (RCCM). Work in MC's lab was funded by the a Wellcome Trust award (093008/Z10/Z).