Optimization of 2D and 3D cell culture to study membrane organization with STED microscopy

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Riccardo Maraspini - , Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Author)
  • Chen Ho Wang - , Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Author)
  • Alf Honigmann - , Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Author)

Abstract

Epithelia cells assemble into sheets that compartmentalize organs and generate tissue barriers. This is achieved by forming polarized membrane domains, which are connected by junctional complexes. While much is known about the organization of the basal membrane due to its easy accessibility by high and super-resolution microscopy, the apical and lateral membrane domains remain poorly characterized. Here we describe our methods to study the molecular organization of apical and lateral membrane domains by combining 2D and 3D epithelial cell culture with super-resolution STED microscopy. We show that inverted cell monolayers enable live cell imaging of the apical membrane with a resolution sufficient to resolve the densely packed micro-villi of human enterocytes. Furthermore, 3D cell culture enables us to resolve adhesion complexes in the lateral domain of kidney derived cells. We envision that these methods will help to reveal the supra-molecular structure of lateral and apical membrane domains in epithelial cells.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number014001
JournalJournal of Physics D: Applied Physics
Volume53
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-0475-3790/work/161889539

Keywords

Keywords

  • actin cortex, adhesion complexes, cell polarization, epithelial tissue, membrane organization, STED