Oral Presentation 26th ACMM “2020 Visions in Microscopy”

3D Quantification of Primary T cell Nuclei using Single Molecule Imaging and Convex Hull Analysis (#58)

Ashley M Rozario 1 , Alison Morey 2 , Cade Elliot 1 , Stephen J Turner 2 , Toby DM Bell 1
  1. School of Chemistry, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia
  2. Department of Microbiology, Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Clayton, VIC, Australia

Super-resolution fluorescence imaging allows investigation into previously unseen spatial realms and is finding wide application, particularly in biology. Single molecule techniques such as dSTORM can achieve resolution as good as 20 nm, a 10-fold improvement over the diffraction limit. Fitting 2D Gaussians to single molecule point-spread-functions (PSFs) enable high precision localization of individual emitters in xy. Engineering PSFs using optical astigmatism enables 3D dSTORM for up to 1 μm in z [1, 2]. This can be extended by sequentially imaging and combining multiple axial planes in an en bloc fashion. We have applied this approach to imaging over 6 μm in z with quantification of the 3D dSTORM data achieved using convex hull analysis of single molecule localizations mapped in 3D space using ViSP [3]. Using this approach, we show the laminar periphery of primary immune T cell nuclei as a hollow spheroid ~ 5 µm diameter with distinct crevices and folded regions with a measured average volume of 110 µm3 and laminar surface area of 130 µm2. Results on applying these measurements and analysis protocols to quantify intranuclear components of T cells including histone modifications, will be reported along with discussion of progress towards correlating these with T cell differentiation and function [4].

  1. Huang, B., et al., Three-Dimensional Super-Resolution Imaging by Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy. Science, 2008. 319: p. 810 - 813.
  2. Rawlinson, S.M., et al., Viral regulation of host cell biology by hijacking of the nucleolar DNA-damage response. Nature Communications, 2018. 9(1): p. 3057.
  3. Beheiry, M.E. and M. Dahan, ViSP: representing single-particle localizations in three dimensions. Nature Methods, 2013. 10: p. 689.
  4. Russ, B., et al., T cell immunity as a tool for studying epigenetic regulation of cellular differentiation. Frontiers in Genetics, 2013. 4(218).