Imaging and characterisation of the surface of live cells

Klenerman D, Korchev YE, Davis SJ. (2011), Curr Opin Chem Biol. 15, 696-703

Abstract

Determining the organisation of key molecules on the surface of live cells in two dimensions and how this changes during biological processes, such as signaling, is a major challenge in cell biology and requires methods with nanoscale resolution. Recent advances in fluorescence imaging both at the diffraction limit tracking single molecules and exploiting super resolution imaging have now reached a stage where they can provide fundamentally new insights. Complementary developments in scanning ion conductance microscopy also allow the cell surface to be imaged with nanoscale resolution. The challenge now is to combine the information obtained using these different methods and on different cells to obtain a coherent view of the cell surface. In the future this needs to be driven by interdisciplinary research between physical scientists and biologists.

Key figure: Principle of the DySCo method

Unassociated molecules show little correlated motion (left) whereas associated molecules track within a short distance of one another for multiple frames (right). Unassociated molecules may track together by chance over a short distance (left, middle of tracks) but the probability of this occurring for multiple frames is small.