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Cell biology

Line-scanning speeds up Brillouin microscopy

Nature Methods volume 20, pages 643–644 (2023)Cite this article

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Two new Brillouin microscopes leverage line-scanning to overcome previous limitations of the technique, enabling fast imaging, with low phototoxicity, of mechanical properties in living embryos of model organisms and tumor spheroids.

A growing body of evidence has shown the importance of cell and tissue mechanical properties and their interplay with the environment. Mechanical forces can affect several cellular properties, including proliferation, shape, differentiation, apoptosis and sorting. Furthermore, aberrant mechanical properties or an impaired mechanoresponse are associated with several diseases1, including cancer, as well as aging2. Our ability to measure the mechanical properties of intact cells and tissues in situ is therefore not only key to understanding tissue morphogenesis and homeostasis but could also offer a tool for early diagnosis of disease. Several techniques have been developed to probe the mechanical properties of cells and tissues; however, most of them require invasive manipulation to the sample (for example, micropipette aspiration, tissue indentation, injections of beads), to which the cells can react, complicating interpretation of experiments. In this issue of Nature Methods, two teams propose line-scanning Brillouin microscopes for in situ mechanical characterization of live tissues3,4.

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Fig. 1: Principle of line-scanning Brillouin microscopy.

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Acknowledgements

N.K. was supported by a Leverhulme Trust project grant (RPG-2020-068) awarded to Y.M. G.P. was supported by an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship (ALTF 786-2020). Y.M. was funded by an MRC award MR/W027437/1, a Lister Institute Research Prize and the EMBO Young Investigator Programme.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Nargess Khalilgharibi, Giulia Paci.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, University College London, London, UK

    Nargess Khalilgharibi, Giulia Paci & Yanlan Mao

  2. Institute for the Physics of Living Systems, University College London, London, UK

    Nargess Khalilgharibi, Giulia Paci & Yanlan Mao

Authors
  1. Nargess Khalilgharibi
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  2. Giulia Paci
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  3. Yanlan Mao
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Correspondence to Yanlan Mao.

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Khalilgharibi, N., Paci, G. & Mao, Y. Line-scanning speeds up Brillouin microscopy. Nat Methods 20, 643–644 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-023-01843-w

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