Revealing Assembly of a Pore-Forming Complex Using Single-Cell Kinetic Analysis and Modeling.

Many biological processes depend on the sequential assembly of protein complexes. However, studying the kinetics of such processes by direct methods is often not feasible. As an important class of such protein complexes, pore-forming toxins start their journey as soluble monomeric proteins, and oligomerize into transmembrane complexes to eventually form pores in the target cell membrane. Here, we monitored pore formation kinetics for the well-characterized bacterial pore-forming toxin aerolysin in single cells in real time to determine the lag times leading to the formation of the first functional pores per cell. Probabilistic modeling of these lag times revealed that one slow and seven equally fast rate-limiting reactions best explain the overall pore formation kinetics. The model predicted that monomer activation is the rate-limiting step for the entire pore formation process. We hypothesized that this could be through release of a propeptide and indeed found that peptide removal abolished these steps. This study illustrates how stochasticity in the kinetics of a complex process can be exploited to identify rate-limiting mechanisms underlying multistep biomolecular assembly pathways.

Measurement of absolute cell volume, osmotic membrane water permeability, and refractive index of transmembrane water and solute flux by digital holographic microscopy.

A dual-wavelength digital holographic microscope to measure absolute volume of living cells is proposed. The optical setup allows us to reconstruct two quantitative phase contrast images at two different wavelengths from a single hologram acquisition. When adding the absorbing dye fast green FCF as a dispersive agent to the extracellular medium, cellular thickness can be univocally determined in the full field of view. In addition to the absolute cell volume, the method can be applied to derive important biophysical parameters of living cells including osmotic membrane water permeability coefficient and the integral intracellular refractive index (RI). Further, the RI of transmembrane flux can be determined giving an indication about the nature of transported solutes. The proposed method is applied to cultured human embryonic kidney cells, Chinese hamster ovary cells, human red blood cells, mouse cortical astrocytes, and neurons.

Automated segmentation of multiple red blood cells with digital holographic microscopy.

We present a method to automatically segment red blood cells (RBCs) visualized by digital holographic microscopy (DHM), which is based on the marker-controlled watershed algorithm. Quantitative phase images of RBCs can be obtained by using off-axis DHM along to provide some important information about each RBC, including size, shape, volume, hemoglobin content, etc. The most important process of segmentation based on marker-controlled watershed is to perform an accurate localization of internal and external markers. Here, we first obtain the binary image via Otsu algorithm. Then, we apply morphological operations to the binary image to get the internal markers. We then apply the distance transform algorithm combined with the watershed algorithm to generate external markers based on internal markers. Finally, combining the internal and external markers, we modify the original gradient image and apply the watershed algorithm. By appropriately identifying the internal and external markers, the problems of oversegmentation and undersegmentation are avoided. Furthermore, the internal and external parts of the RBCs phase image can also be segmented by using the marker-controlled watershed combined with our method, which can identify the internal and external markers appropriately. Our experimental results show that the proposed method achieves good performance in terms of segmenting RBCs and could thus be helpful when combined with an automated classification of RBCs.

Automated quantitative analysis of 3D morphology and mean corpuscular hemoglobin in human red blood cells stored in different periods.

Quantitative phase (QP) images of red blood cells (RBCs), which are obtained by off-axis digital holographic microscopy, can provide quantitative information about three-dimensional (3D) morphology of human RBCs and the characteristic properties such as mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) and MCH surface density (MCHSD). In this paper, we investigate modifications of the 3D morphology and MCH in RBCs induced by the period of storage time for the purpose of classification of RBCs with different periods of storage by using off-axis digital holographic microscopy. The classification of RBCs based on the duration of storage is highly relevant because a long storage of blood before transfusion may alter the functionality of RBCs and, therefore, cause complications in patients. To analyze any changes in the 3D morphology and MCH of RBCs due to storage, we use data sets from RBC samples stored for 8, 13, 16, 23, 27, 30, 34, 37, 40, 47, and 57 days, respectively. The data sets consist of more than 3,300 blood cells in eleven classes, with more than 300 blood cells per class. The classes indicate the storage period of RBCs and are listed in chronological order. Using the RBCs donated by healthy persons, the off-axis digital holographic microscopy reconstructs several quantitative phase images of RBC samples stored for eleven different periods. We employ marker-controlled watershed transform to remove the background in the RBC quantitative phase images obtained by the off-axis digital holographic microscopy. More than 300 single RBCs are extracted from the segmented quantitative phase images for each class. Such a large number of RBC samples enable us to obtain statistical distributions of the characteristic properties of RBCs after a specific period of storage. Experimental results show that the 3D morphology of the RBCs, in contrast to MCH, is essentially related to the aging of the RBCs.

Simultaneous optical recording in multiple cells by digital holographic microscopy of chloride current associated to activation of the ligand-gated chloride channel GABA(A) receptor.

Chloride channels represent a group of targets for major clinical indications. However, molecular screening for chloride channel modulators has proven to be difficult and time-consuming as approaches essentially rely on the use of fluorescent dyes or invasive patch-clamp techniques which do not lend themselves to the screening of large sets of compounds. To address this problem, we have developed a non-invasive optical method, based on digital holographic microcopy (DHM), allowing monitoring of ion channel activity without using any electrode or fluorescent dye. To illustrate this approach, GABA(A) mediated chloride currents have been monitored with DHM. Practically, we show that DHM can non-invasively provide the quantitative determination of transmembrane chloride fluxes mediated by the activation of chloride channels associated with GABA(A) receptors. Indeed through an original algorithm, chloride currents elicited by application of appropriate agonists of the GABA(A) receptor can be derived from the quantitative phase signal recorded with DHM. Finally, chloride currents can be determined and pharmacologically characterized non-invasively simultaneously on a large cellular sampling by DHM.

Spatially-resolved eigenmode decomposition of red blood cells membrane fluctuations questions the role of ATP in flickering.

Red blood cells (RBCs) present unique reversible shape deformability, essential for both function and survival, resulting notably in cell membrane fluctuations (CMF). These CMF have been subject of many studies in order to obtain a better understanding of these remarkable biomechanical membrane properties altered in some pathological states including blood diseases. In particular the discussion over the thermal or metabolic origin of the CMF has led in the past to a large number of investigations and modeling. However, the origin of the CMF is still debated. In this article, we present an analysis of the CMF of RBCs by combining digital holographic microscopy (DHM) with an orthogonal subspace decomposition of the imaging data. These subspace components can be reliably identified and quantified as the eigenmode basis of CMF that minimizes the deformation energy of the RBC structure. By fitting the observed fluctuation modes with a theoretical dynamic model, we find that the CMF are mainly governed by the bending elasticity of the membrane and that shear and tension elasticities have only a marginal influence on the membrane fluctations of the discocyte RBC. Further, our experiments show that the role of ATP as a driving force of CMF is questionable. ATP, however, seems to be required to maintain the unique biomechanical properties of the RBC membrane that lead to thermally excited CMF.

Automated statistical quantification of three-dimensional morphology and mean corpuscular hemoglobin of multiple red blood cells.

In this paper, we present an automated approach to quantify information about three-dimensional (3D) morphology, hemoglobin content and density of mature red blood cells (RBCs) using off-axis digital holographic microscopy (DHM) and statistical algorithms. The digital hologram of RBCs is recorded by a CCD camera using an off-axis interferometry setup and quantitative phase images of RBCs are obtained by a numerical reconstruction algorithm. In order to remove unnecessary parts and obtain clear targets in the reconstructed phase image with many RBCs, the marker-controlled watershed segmentation algorithm is applied to the phase image. Each RBC in the segmented phase image is three-dimensionally investigated. Characteristic properties such as projected cell surface, average phase, sphericity coefficient, mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) and MCH surface density of each RBC is quantitatively measured. We experimentally demonstrate that joint statistical distributions of the characteristic parameters of RBCs can be obtained by our algorithm and efficiently used as a feature pattern to discriminate between RBC populations that differ in shape and hemoglobin content. Our study opens the possibility of automated RBC quantitative analysis suitable for the rapid classification of a large number of RBCs from an individual blood specimen, which is a fundamental step to develop a diagnostic approach based on DHM.

Realistic 3D coherent transfer function inverse filtering of complex fields.

We present a novel technique for three-dimensional (3D) image processing of complex fields. It consists in inverting the coherent image formation by filtering the complex spectrum with a realistic 3D coherent transfer function (CTF) of a high-NA digital holographic microscope. By combining scattering theory and signal processing, the method is demonstrated to yield the reconstruction of a scattering object field. Experimental reconstructions in phase and amplitude are presented under non-design imaging conditions. The suggested technique is best suited for an implementation in high-resolution diffraction tomography based on sample or illumination rotation.

Determination of transmembrane water fluxes in neurons elicited by glutamate ionotropic receptors and by the cotransporters KCC2 and NKCC1: a digital holographic microscopy study.

Digital holographic microscopy (DHM) is a noninvasive optical imaging technique that provides quantitative phase images of living cells. In a recent study, we showed that the quantitative monitoring of the phase signal by DHM was a simple label-free method to study the effects of glutamate on neuronal optical responses (Pavillon et al., 2010). Here, we refine these observations and show that glutamate produces the following three distinct optical responses in mouse primary cortical neurons in culture, predominantly mediated by NMDA receptors: biphasic, reversible decrease (RD) and irreversible decrease (ID) responses. The shape and amplitude of the optical signal were not associated with a particular cellular phenotype but reflected the physiopathological status of neurons linked to the degree of NMDA activity. Thus, the biphasic, RD, and ID responses indicated, respectively, a low-level, a high-level, and an "excitotoxic" level of NMDA activation. Moreover, furosemide and bumetanide, two inhibitors of sodium-coupled and/or potassium-coupled chloride movement strongly modified the phase shift, suggesting an involvement of two neuronal cotransporters, NKCC1 (Na-K-Cl) and KCC2 (K-Cl) in the genesis of the optical signal. This observation is of particular interest since it shows that DHM is the first imaging technique able to monitor dynamically and in situ the activity of these cotransporters during physiological and/or pathological neuronal conditions.

Recognition and classification of red blood cells using digital holographic microscopy and data clustering with discriminant analysis.

We propose to apply statistical clustering algorithms on a three-dimensional profile of red blood cells (RBCs) obtained through digital holographic microscopy (DHM). We show that two classes of RBCs stored for 14 and 38 days can be effectively classified. Two-dimensional intensity images of these cells are virtually the same. DHM allows for measurement of the RBCs' biconcave profile, resulting in a discriminative dataset. Two statistical clustering algorithms are compared. A model-based clustering approach classifies the pixels of an RBC and recognizes the RBC as either new or old based. The K-means algorithm is applied to the four-dimensional feature vector extracted from the RBC profile.

Cell morphology and intracellular ionic homeostasis explored with a multimodal approach combining epifluorescence and digital holographic microscopy.

The authors have developed a live-cell multimodality microscope combining epifluorescence with digital holographic microscopy; it has been implemented with a decoupling procedure allowing to separately measure from the quantitative phase important cell parameters including absolute volume, shape and integral intracellular refractive index. In combination with the numerous different specific fluorescent cellular probes, this multimodality microscopy can address important issues in cell biology. This is demonstrated by the study of intracellular calcium homeostasis associated with the change in cell volume, which play a critical role in the excitotoxicity-induced neuronal death.

Spatial analysis of erythrocyte membrane fluctuations by digital holographic microscopy.

Red blood cell (RBC) membrane fluctuations provide important insights into cell states. We present a spatial analysis of red blood cell membrane fluctuations by using digital holographic microscopy (DHM). This interferometric and dye-free technique, possessing nanometric axial and microsecond temporal sensitivities enables to measure cell membrane fluctuations (CMF) on the whole cell surface. DHM acquisition is combined with a model which allows extracting the membrane fluctuation amplitude, while taking into account cell membrane topology. Uneven distribution of CMF amplitudes over the RBC surface is observed, showing maximal values in a ring corresponding to the highest points on the RBC torus as well as in some scattered areas in the inner region of the RBC. CMF amplitudes of 35.9+/-8.9 nm and 4.7+/-0.5 nm (averaged over the cell surface) were determined for normal and ethanol-fixed RBCs, respectively.