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Updated: Nov 27, 2025
Visualizing Adhesion Formation in Cells by Means of Advanced Spinning Disk-Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence Microscopy
Published on: January 21, 2019
Real-time and wide-field mapping of cell-substrate adhesion gap and its evolution via surface plasmon resonance
Siqing Dai1, Tongyao Yu2, Jiwei Zhang1
1MOE Key Laboratory of Material Physics and Chemistry under Extraordinary Conditions, and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Physical Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710129, China.
Abstract:
As one of the most common biological phenomena, cell adhesion plays a vital role in the cellular activities such as the growth and apoptosis, attracting tremendous research interests over the past decades. Taking the cell evolution under drug injection as an example, the dynamics of cell-substrate adhesion gap can provide valuable information in the fundamental research of cell contacts. A robust technique of monitoring the cell adhesion gap and its evolution in real time is highly desired. Herein, we develop a surface plasmon resonance holographic microscopy to achieve the novel functionality of real-time and wide-field mapping of the cell-substrate adhesion gap and its evolution in situ. The cell adhesion gap images of mouse osteoblast cells and human breast cancer cells have been effectively extracted in a dynamic and label-free manner. The proposed technique opens up a new avenue of revealing the cell-substrate interaction mechanism and renders the wide applications in the biosensing area.
