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A critique of methods for temperature imaging in single cells

We argue that standard thermodynamic considerations and scaling laws show that a single cell cannot substantially raise its temperature by endogenous thermogenesis. This statement seriously questions the interpretations of recent work reporting temperature heterogeneities measured in single living cells.

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Figure 1: Temperature mapping in living cells.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Aix-Marseille University A*Midex (ANR-2011-IDEX-0001-02) and Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) grants Tkinet (ANR-2011-BSV5-019-05), France Bio Imaging (ANR-2010-INSB-04-01) and France Life Imaging (ANR-2011-INSB-0006).

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Correspondence to Guillaume Baffou.

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Baffou, G., Rigneault, H., Marguet, D. et al. A critique of methods for temperature imaging in single cells. Nat Methods 11, 899–901 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3073

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