Nanoscale imaging of the adhesion core including integrin ?1 on intact living cells using scanning electron-assisted dielectric-impedance microscopy.

ABSTRACT: The integrins are a superfamily of transmembrane proteins composed of ? and ? subunit dimers involved in cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions. The largest integrin subgroup is integrin ?1, which contributes to several malignant phenotypes. Recently, we have developed a novel imaging technology named scanning electron-assisted dielectric-impedance microscopy (SE-ADM), which visualizes untreated living mammalian cells in aqueous conditions with high contrast. Using the SE-ADM system, we observed 60-nm gold colloids with antibodies directly binding to the focal adhesion core containing integrin ?1 on mammalian cancer cells without staining and fixation. The adhesion core contains three or four high-density regions of integrin ?1 and connects to the actin filament. An adhesion core with high-density integrin ?1 is suggested to contain 10-20 integrin dimers. Our SE-ADM system can also visualize various other membrane proteins in living cells in medium without staining and fixation.

SUBMITTER: Okada T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6147470 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature