Poking holes into membranes to label proteins for live imaging

There are two major way to label inner proteins, structures or organnelles for live cell imaging. The most common method is fusing the studied protein to a fluorescent protein. A second approach is the addition of labeling agents from outside the cells. However, many labels cannot penetrate through the cell membrane. This is true to some, but not all dyes, but more importantly, to larger agents, such as antibodies or DNA/RNA oligos. To allow these agents to enter cells, researchers can use microinjection, electroporation, bead-loading, or transfection (e.g. of short oligos).

In a paper just published in eLife, a new technique is described to form temporary holed in the cell membrane. These holes allow delivery of any labeling agent into cells.

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Imaging translation of single mRNAs in live cells

Translating the information encoded in mRNAs into proteins is one of the most basic processes in biology. The mechanism requires a machinery (i.e. ribosomes) and components (mRNA template, charged tRNAs, regulatory factors, energy) that are shared by all organisms on Earth. We’ve learned a great deal about translation over the last century. We know how it works, how it is being regulated at many levels and under varuious conditions. We know the structures of the components. We have drugs that can inhibit translation. With the emergance of next-gen sequencing, we can now perform ribosome profiling and determine exatly which mRNAs are being translated, how many ribosomes occupay each mRNA species and where these ribosomes “sit” on the mRNA, on average. New biochemical approaches like SILAC and PUNCH-P can quantifiy newly synthesized proteins & peptides. Yet, all of that information comes from population studies, typically whole cell populations. Rarely, whole transcriptome/ribosome analysis of a single cell is performed. Still, there is no dynamic information of translation, since cells are fixed and/or lysed. And there is no spatial information regarding where in the cell translation occurs (poor spatial information can be determined if cell fractionation is performed, which is never a perfect separation of organelles/regions and we are still not at the stage of single organelle sequencing).

Imaging translation in single cells is intended to provide both spatial and dynamic information on translation at the single cell and, hopefully, single mRNA molecule resolution. Recently, four papers were published (on the same day!) providing information on translation of single mRNAs. Here is a summary of these papers.

ASCB15 – part 2

I ended Part 1 after the morning session on pushing the boundaries of imaging.

After the amazing talks on imaging, I browsed the halls, visited some exhibitors, sampled a couple of exhibitor tech-talks. I later went to a mycrosymposium (#2: signaling in health & disease). This was mainly to see how this ePoster thing works, but also I promised Qunxiang Ong – with whom I discussed optogenetics the day before – to be at his presentation. He used a light-induced dimerization of signaling proteins to study the effect on neurite growth. The nice thing in his system was that the cells were plated in wells which were partly dark – so light-induction cannot take place in these regions. This allowed for analysis of neurite growth in lit vs “light-protected” regions of the same cell.

After this session, I attended my first “discussion table”.

New data on SmartFlare – do they detect mRNA?

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a post regarding my concerns with SmartFlare, supposedly a novel method for live imaging of RNA in cells.

In a nutshell, SmartFlare are gold nanoparticles covered in oligos specific to a certain mRNA of interest. Supposedly, cells internalize these particles and, once the mRNA hybridize to the oligo, a complementary fluorecently labeled oligo is being unquenchhed and “flares”, indicating the present of said mRNA.

You can read about my concerns in that older post, but apparently I wasn’t the only one concerned about their validity.

Raphaël Lévy from U. of Liverpool (UK) was concerned as well. He endeavored into an open science project to try and answer his concerns (which is why I allow myself to openly review his paper).

Tracking membranes by imaging – mCLING and surface glycans

Living cells exhibit many types of membranes which participate in most biological precesses, one way or another. Imaging membranes is usually acheived by two types of reagents: chemical dyes or fluorescent proteins that are targeted to the membrane itself or inside an organelle.

The chemical dyes are usually targeted to an organelle based on a specific chemical property of that organelle.

For example:

Rhodamine 123, tetramethylrosamine, and Mitotracker  are dyes that preferentially target mitochondria, due to its membrane potential. Mitotracker has thiol groups that allow it to bind to matrix proteins, thus making it more resistant to disruption of the membrane potential (e.g. by fixation).

Lysotracker are lypophilic, mildly basic dyes, which accumulate in the acidic lysosomes.

ER-tracker is a BODIPY (boron-dipyrromethene; a group of relatively pH insensitive dyes that are almost all water insoluble) based dyes which are linked to glibenclamide – a sulfonylurease – which binds to ATP sensitive Potassium channels exclusively resident in the ER membrane.

Long chain carbocyanines like DiL, DiO and DiD are lipophylic fluorescent molecules, which are weakly fluorescent in water, but highly fluorescent when incorporetaed into membranes, particularly the plasma membrane.

FM lipophylic styryl dyes bind the plasma membranes in a reversible manner and are also incorporated into internal vesicles.

On the other hand, fluorescent proteins (FP) are targeted to membranes or organelles by fusing them to either whole proteins that localize to a specific organelle, or to short peptides that carry a localization signal. Thus, a nuclear localization signal (NLS) targets the to the nucleus, mitochondrial targeting signal (MTS) to the mitochondria and a palmitoylation signal to the plasma membrane and endocytic vesicle.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each system, relating to ease of use, specificity, photostability etc… I do not want to go into that.

Here, I would like to mention two new methods to image the plasma membrane.

In the right place at the right time: visualizing and understanding mRNA localization

The title of this post is also the title of a review paper that I co-authored  with Adina Buxbaum, a recently graduated PhD student from Rob Singer’s lab. The review was published last week in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell biology.

In this paper we review some of the old and new methods to visualize mRNA. These include mostly FISH and MS2-like systems, which I’ve discussed extensively in this blog. There is also a short section (“box”) on quantitative analysis tools for mRNA localization imaging.

We then discuss the current knowledge on the mechanisms of mRNA localization and how it relates to the biology in two very distinct model systems – unicellular organisms (budding yeast) and the extremely polarized neuronal cell.  We also discuss examples in other organisms from bacteria through fly to frog and mammals.

I’m biased, of course, but I think this turned out to be a balanced, comprehensive, yet not too detailed review paper that will benefit both beginners which are unfamiliar with the RNA localization field, as well as experts which are used to a single method or a single model organism.
Buxbaum, A., Haimovich, G., & Singer, R. (2014). In the right place at the right time: visualizing and understanding mRNA localization Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology DOI: 10.1038/nrm3918

Eliminating mutated mitochondria during in-vitro fertilization

There are several genetic diseases which originate not from mutations in the nuclear genome but mutations in the mitochondrial genome. In humans, the threshold for disease occurrence is if 60% of the mitochondria has mutated mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) (a mixed mitochondrial origin is called heteroplasmy). There is currently no cure, and no good way to prevent these genetic diseases.

Since the source of the mitochondria is solely from the oocyte, a lot of effort is invested in trying to get rid of mutated mitochondria by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures – thus preventing the disease in the offspring. Two methods have been tried so far – pronuclear transfer (PNT) and spindle-chromosome transfer (ST).  The idea is to extract the nuclear genetic material of the oocyte or zygote and transfer it to an enucleated oocyte or zygote with healthy mitochondria. However, in both cases, there is still carry-over of some mutated mitochondria to levels that can be as high as 44%.

In this new paper published in Cell, a group of researchers from China suggest a different approach.