Ultrasound Imaging of Macrophages Intracellularly Labelled with Biosynthetic Gas Vesicles
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Updated: Jun 14, 2025
Study of Phagolysosome Biogenesis in Live Macrophages
Published on: March 10, 2014
Rong Xue1, Zhixi Liu2, Liang Liu1
1Department of Ultrasound Medicine, Hunan Provincial People's Hospital, The First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Normal University, No. 61 Jiefang West Road, Furong District, Changsha, 410061, China.
Purpose:
This study aimed to develop a novel method for real-time imaging to track macrophages and to make it possible to visually track their dynamic features.
Procedures:
The archaeon Halobacterium NRC-1 was cultured in an ATCC medium. Buoyant cells were allowed to produce biosynthetic gas vesicles (GVs), and isolated GVs were collected after lysis. Gas vesicle-labelled macrophages (GV@RAWs) were obtained by incubating macrophage (RAW 264.7) cells with GVs. The ability of GV@RAWs to track macrophages in real-time for a long term was assessed using a high-frequency ultrasound imaging system.
Results:
We successfully synthesised and isolated GV@RAWs by co-incubating them with RAW 264.7. The results showed that GV@RAW produced significant ultrasound signals without affecting cell survival and could achieve real-time imaging for up to 3 days in vitro.
Conclusion:
This research provides a new way to achieve long-term real-time imaging of macrophages, opening up new possibilities for immune response research, clinical diagnosis and therapeutic strategies for inflammatory diseases.
