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Single-Cell Biophysics: Measurement, Modulation, and Modeling
Poster Abstracts
150
104-POS
Board 52
Visualizing Mitochondrial Dynamics and Cellular States with Environmentally Sensitive
Fluorescence Probes
Sufi O. Raja
1
, Gandhi Sivaraman
1
, Ananya Mukherjee
1
, Shikha Sharma
1
, Sunny Kataria
2
,
Akash Gulyani
1
.
1
Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Bengaluru, India,
2
National Center
for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, India.
Mitochondria are known as power house of the cell as they efficiently produce ATP through
Oxidative Phosphorylation (OxPhos). Apart from this, mitochondria also play significant role in
regulating cellular metabolism, calcium and ROS signaling as well as in programmed cell death.
Despite decades on research, precise and real-time information on mitochondrial dynamics and
functionality, is still limiting. For example, recently it has been shown that cellular migration
during metastasis relies, in part, on mitochondrial motility and precise positioning within the cell.
Similarly, morphology and activity of mitochondria are linked with maintenance of stemness as
well as triggering of differentiation event. Therefore, unraveling the spatio-temporal localization
as well as functional heterogeneity of mitochondria during various cellular states appears to be
crucial for understanding the coherent behavior of cell. To better visualize the functional
dynamics of mitochondrion, we have developed red-emitting, multi-functional, novel
mitochondrial probes that are sensitive to local environment, specifically parameters like
viscosity, pH, ROS, etc. The developed dyes have low toxicity and very high photo-stability,
allowing their use in long term imaging. In this presentation, we will show these dyes have
yielded new insights into mitochondrial dynamics in embryonic stem cells as well as onset of
differentiation. In a different example, we have also used our new dyes to probe mitochondrial
heterogeneity within primary ‘activated’ cells during cell migration. These results would be
placed in the context of our larger efforts to build new ways of probing ‘cellular dynamics’ with
a focus on physico-chemical changes in the cell.