Abstract
Using a single biological element as a photonic component with well-defined features has become a new intriguing paradigm in biophotonics. Here we show that endogenous lipid droplets in the mature adipose cells can behave as fully biocompatible microlenses to strengthen the ability of microscopic imaging as well as detecting intra- and extracellular signals. By the assistance of biolenses made of the lipid droplets, enhanced fluorescence imaging of cytoskeleton, lysosomes, and adenoviruses has been achieved. At the same time, we demonstrated that the required excitation power can be reduced by up to 73%. The lipidic microlenses are finely manipulated by optical tweezers in order to address targets and perform their real-time imaging inside the cells. An efficient detecting of fluorescence signal of cancer cells in extracellular fluid was accomplished due to the focusing effect of incident light by the lipid droplets. The lipid droplets acting as endogenous intracellular microlenses open the intriguing route for a multifunctional biocompatible optics tool for biosensing, endoscopic imaging, and single-cell diagnosis.
Highlights
With the demand in real-time monitoring of endoplasmic variations and rapid detection of extracellular signals, a great number of approaches to bioimaging have been developed, including electronic, X-ray, optical, ultrasonic, magnetic, thermal, and mechanical methods, to obtain the significant information about the physiological and pathological processes of cells[1,2,3]
As organelles, endogenous lipid droplets can persist in the cytosol for a time that is dependent with the physiological state and the type of the cells
Due to the crowded intracellular environment, a higher optical power is required for the trapping laser of the optical tweezing system (OTS) to manipulate the larger lipid droplets inside the cells
Summary
With the demand in real-time monitoring of endoplasmic variations and rapid detection of extracellular signals, a great number of approaches to bioimaging have been developed, including electronic, X-ray, optical, ultrasonic, magnetic, thermal, and mechanical methods, to obtain the significant information about the physiological and pathological processes of cells[1,2,3]. Among these approaches, optical microscope imaging techniques become preferable as they enable a straightforward and real-time visualization that is highly desirable for observation and diagnostics in vivo. Most of the microspheres in current strategies are in solid and artificially synthetic materials (e.g., SiO2, polystyrene, BaTiO3, TiO2) and so
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