Molecular Microscopy of Oil Body and Lipid Droplet Chemistry In Situ with Physiologically-Relevant Readouts
Paper in proceeding, 2020

Spatial heterogeneity at the molecular scale is a ubiquitous feature of all biological tissues, which is fundamentally linked to their native functions and to pathology. Probing the local chemistry of complex biological tissues requires the development and application of imaging tools that can identify the intrinsic molecular features in a sample without sacrificing high spatial resolution. In this talk, I will describe our efforts to tackle this challenge for measuring lipid inclusion chemistry and morphology in situ. We have developed nonlinear label-free microscopy and associated analytical tools to determine the biochemistry of lipid droplets and oil bodies with high spatial resolution in a variety of samples. Importantly, our method yields physiologically-relevant quantities (chain length and saturation) as opposed to physical chemical ratios. I will show how we have used this ability to map how lipid droplet chemical composition in brown and white adipose tissue adapts to high fat dietary intervention. Going forward, we want to expand the disease pathologies studied and I will present early results on our work on lipid droplets in neurological diseases.

Author

Alexandra Paul

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Chemical Biology

The University of Texas at Austin

Sapun H. Parekh

The University of Texas at Austin

Biophysical Journal

0006-3495 (ISSN) 1542-0086 (eISSN)

Vol. 118 3 468A-468A

64th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical-Society
San Diego, CA, USA,

Subject Categories

Biological Sciences

Neurology

DOI

10.1016/j.bpj.2019.11.2599

More information

Latest update

6/4/2020 9