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Full-field interferometry for counting and differentiating aquatic biotic nanoparticles: from laboratory to Tara
Martine Boccara1, Yasmina Fedala2, Catherine Venien Bryan3
1Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Institut de Biologie de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure (IBENS), CNRS UMR 8197, INSERM U1024, 46 rue d'Ulm, F-75005 Paris, France; Atelier de Bioinformatique, UMR 7205 ISYEB CNRS, MNHN, UPMC, EPHE, 45 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France; These authors contributed equally to this paper; mboccara@biologie.ens.fr.
Abstract:
There is a huge abundance of viruses and membrane vesicles in seawater. We describe a new full-field, incoherently illuminated, shot-noise limited, common-path interferometric detection method that we couple with the analysis of Brownian motion to detect, quantify, and differentiate biotic nanoparticles. We validated the method with calibrated nanoparticles and homogeneous DNA or RNA viruses. The smallest virus size that we characterized with a suitable signal-to-noise ratio was around 30 nm in diameter. Analysis of Brownian motions revealed anisotropic trajectories for myoviruses.We further applied the method for vesicles detection and for analysis of coastal and oligotrophic samples from Tara Oceans circumnavigation.
