title: Revealing the carbohydrate pattern on a cell surface by super-resolution imaging.
abstract: Carbohydrates are involved in various physiological and pathological activities including cell adhesion, signal transduction and tumor invasion. The distribution of carbohydrates is the molecular basis of their multiple functions, but remains poorly understood. Here, we employed direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (dSTORM) to visualize the pattern of N-acetylglucosamine (N-GlcNAc) on Vero cell membranes at the nanometer level of resolution. We found that N-GlcNAcs exist in irregular clusters on the apical membrane with an average cluster area of about 0.37 μm(2). Most of these N-GlcNAc clusters are co-localized with lipid rafts by dual-color dSTORM imaging, suggesting that carbohydrates are closely associated with lipid rafts as the functional domains. Our results demonstrate that super-resolution imaging is capable of characterizing the distribution of carbohydrates on the cellular surface at the molecular level.
authors: State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin 130022, P.R. China. hdWang@ciac.ac.cn.
authors: Junling
authors: J
authors: Chen
authors: Jing
authors: J
authors: Gao
authors: Jiazhen
authors: J
authors: Wu
authors: Min
authors: M
authors: Zhang
authors: Mingjun
authors: M
authors: Cai
authors: Haijiao
authors: H
authors: Xu
authors: Junguang
authors: J
authors: Jiang
authors: Zhiyuan
authors: Z
authors: Tian
authors: Hongda
authors: H
authors: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002241:Carbohydrates / Q000737:chemistry*; D002448:Cell Adhesion; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000737:chemistry*; D002522:Chlorocebus aethiops; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes / Q000737:chemistry; D019276:Glycocalyx / Q000737:chemistry; D006017:Glycolipids / Q000737:chemistry; D006023:Glycoproteins / Q000737:chemistry; D021962:Membrane Microdomains / Q000737:chemistry*; D008853:Microscopy / Q000379:methods*; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000737:chemistry; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D015398:Signal Transduction; D012984:Software; D014709:Vero Cells; D047392:beta-Cyclodextrins / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D002241:Carbohydrates; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D006017:Glycolipids; D006023:Glycoproteins; D047392:beta-Cyclodextrins; C031215:betadex