2 research outputs found
Iron Oxide Nanoparticles as a Contrast Agent for Synchrotron Imaging of Sperm
Fast phase-contrast imaging offered by modern synchrotron facilities opens
the possibility of imaging dynamic processes of biological material such as
cells. Cells are mainly composed of carbon and hydrogen, which have low X-ray
attenuation, making cell studies with X-ray tomography challenging. At specific
low energies, cells provide contrast, but cryo-conditions are required to
protect the sample from radiation damage. Thus, non-toxic labelling methods are
needed to prepare living cells for X-ray tomography at higher energies. We
propose using iron oxide nanoparticles due to their proven compatibility in
other biomedical applications. We show how to synthesize and attach iron oxide
nanoparticles and demonstrate that cell-penetrating peptides facilitate iron
oxide nanoparticle uptake into sperm cells. We show results from the TOMCAT
Nanoscope (Swiss Light Source), showing that iron oxide nanoparticles allow the
heads and midpiece of fixed sperm samples to be reconstructed from X-ray
projections taken at 10 keV.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure