title: Real-time sensing of cell morphology by infrared waveguide spectroscopy.
abstract: We demonstrate that a live epithelial cell monolayer can act as a planar waveguide. Our infrared reflectivity measurements show that highly differentiated simple epithelial cells, which maintain tight intercellular connectivity, support efficient waveguiding of the infrared light in the spectral region of 1.4-2.5 µm and 3.5-4 µm. The wavelength and the magnitude of the waveguide mode resonances disclose quantitative dynamic information on cell height and cell-cell connectivity. To demonstrate this we show two experiments. In the first one we trace in real-time the kinetics of the disruption of cell-cell contacts induced by calcium depletion. In the second one we show that cell treatment with the PI3-kinase inhibitor LY294002 results in a progressive decrease in cell height without affecting intercellular connectivity. Our data suggest that infrared waveguide spectroscopy can be used as a novel bio-sensing approach for studying the morphology of epithelial cell sheets in real-time, label-free manner and with high spatial-temporal resolution.
authors.affiliation: The Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. victor.yashunsky@mail.huji.ac.il
authors.forename: Victor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Yashunsky
authors.forename: Tal
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Marciano
authors.forename: Vladislav
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lirtsman
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Golosovsky
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Davidov
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Aroeti
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D002118:Calcium / Q000378:metabolism; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques; D002460:Cell Line; D004791:Enzyme Inhibitors / Q000494:pharmacology; D004847:Epithelial Cells / Q000166:cytology* / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism; D000081082:Phosphoinositide-3 Kinase Inhibitors; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared
chemical_list: D004791:Enzyme Inhibitors; D000081082:Phosphoinositide-3 Kinase Inhibitors; D002118:Calcium