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Updated: Sep 2, 2026

Measurements of Physiological Stress Responses in C. Elegans
Published on: May 21, 2020
Long-Term Bio-Spin Readouts Enable Decoding Immune-Imposed Stress at the Single-Cell Level
Weiming Lin1, Yan Miao1, Haodong Li1
1The Institute for Advanced Studies, State Key Laboratory of Metabolism and Regulation in Complex Organisms, Department of Ophthalmology, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
Abstract:
Electronic spin dynamics represent a fundamentally important yet largely unexplored state parameter of living cells, offering stable sensitivity to intracellular paramagnetic environments associated with cellular stress responses. However, how immune-imposed intracellular stress evolves over time and relates to divergent single-cell outcomes remains unclear, owing to the lack of continuous and nonconsumptive readouts. Here, we establish a long-term bio-spin readout based on nanodiamonds hosting nitrogen-vacancy centers as inheritable intracellular spin reporters, enabling continuous spin relaxometry in living cells. By integrating population-level ROS-associated paramagnetic stress profiling with long-term single-cell tracking in Hela and A549 cancer cells during coculture with activated macrophages, we identify three characteristic oxidative-stress trajectory patterns-remote immune stress, immune evasion, and apoptosis-whose distinct temporal dynamics cannot be resolved by endpoint assays alone. Longitudinal bio-spin measurements reveal that immune pressure is encoded not only by instantaneous oxidative levels but also by the temporal accumulation and regulation of intracellular stress. An empirical bio-spin transition range provides an operational reference for distinguishing recoverable stress responses from apoptosis-associated trajectories, while characteristic completion times capture the interaction- and cell-type-dependent kinetics of stress evolution. Together, this work establishes bio-spin dynamics for resolving immune-imposed stress histories and their associations with divergent cellular outcomes in living systems.
