Dresden 2020 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 7: Biomaterials and Biopolymers (joint session BP/CPP)
BP 7.5: Talk
Monday, March 16, 2020, 16:00–16:15, ZEU 250
Towards transparent living tissues — •Kaushikaram Subramanian1,2,3, Heike Petzold1, Lena Hersemann1,2, and Moritz Kreysing1,2,3 — 1Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany — 2Center for Systems Biology Dresden, Dresden, Germany — 3Cluster of Excellence, Physics of Life, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
Most biological tissues are optically opaque, largely precluding access by light microscopy. In stark contrast, some living tissues and organisms have evolved to be highly transparent. Examples include many deep-sea fish and your retina that enables you to read this text. We asked the question if directed evolution can be used to change the optical phenotype of cells. For this we used a mutation, selection, and replication scheme, in which we favoured the growth of genetic mutant cells that showed reduced light scattering. After only few rounds of selection we gained mammalian cells with upto 2-fold reduced side scattering. Further analysis revealed that the induced partial transparency goes along with last changes of the transcriptome and frequently a reduction of nuclear substructure, a phenotype similar to the photoreceptor cells in the mouse retina. Our results encourages the possibility that deep microscopy on genetically cleared living tissues might one day become reality.