Visualizing Adhesion Formation in Cells by Means of Advanced Spinning Disk-Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence Microscopy

Summary

An advanced microscope that permit fast and high-resolution imaging of both, the isolated plasma membrane and the surrounding intracellular volume, will be presented. The integration of spinning disk and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy in one setup allows live imaging experiments at high acquisition rates up to 3.5 s per image stack.

Abstract

In living cells, processes such as adhesion formation involve extensive structural changes in the plasma membrane and the cell interior. In order to visualize these highly dynamic events, two complementary light microscopy techniques that allow fast imaging of live samples were combined: spinning disk microscopy (SD) for fast and high-resolution volume recording and total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy for precise localization and visualization of the plasma membrane. A comprehensive and complete imaging protocol will be shown for guiding through sample preparation, microscope calibration, image formation and acquisition, resulting in multi-color SD-TIRF live imaging series with high spatio-temporal resolution. All necessary image post-processing steps to generate multi-dimensional live imaging datasets, i.e. registration and combination of the individual channels, are provided in a self-written macro for the open source software ImageJ. The imaging of fluorescent proteins during initiation and maturation of adhesion complexes, as well as the formation of the actin cytoskeletal network, was used as a proof of principle for this novel approach. The combination of high resolution 3D microscopy and TIRF provided a detailed description of these complex processes within the cellular environment and, at the same time, precise localization of the membrane-associated molecules detected with a high signal-to-background ratio.

Introduction

Our days, light microscopy techniques providing high/super resolution imaging in fixed and living specimen are developing rapidly. Super-resolution techniques such as stimulated emission depletion (STED), structured illumination microscopy (SIM) and photo-activation localization microscopy (PALM) or direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), respectively, are commercially available and enable imaging of subcellular structures showing details almost on the molecular scale^1,2,3,4,5,

Protocol

1. Preparation of cells

1. Two days prior to the experiment, seed 3*10⁵ HeLa or NIH3T3 cells in 2 mL of full growth medium per well of a 6-well cell-culture plate. Ensure that cells are handled in a laminar flow hood throughout this protocol.
2. One day prior to the experiment, prepare the transfection reagents according to the manufacturer’s recommendations or an empirically determined protocol, e.g.:
   1. Dilute 1 µg of RFP-Lifeact and 1 µg of YFP-Vinculin in a total of 200 µL reduced serum medium. Vortex the transfection reagent briefly, add 4 µL to 200 µL DNA and vortex again. Incu....

Results

In order to show the potential of SD-TIRF imaging, an assay was developed that should reveal the spatio-temporal organization of cell-matrix adhesion complexes and their interaction with the cytoskeleton during cellular adhesion. Therefore, adherent HeLa or, alternatively, NIH3T3 cells were transfected with YFP-Vinculin and RFP-Lifeact for 18-24 h, trypsinized and seeded onto fibronectin-coated glass bottom dishes. These cell lines were chosen for their pronounced cytoskeleton and higher .......

Discussion

In this paper was presented the first successful implementation of SD and TIRF microscopy in a configuration suitable for performing live cell imaging experiments, i.e. high acquisition rates such as 2 SD-TIRF image stacks per minute at 3 different stage positions, corresponding to a total of 168 frames (circa 3 frames per second), were acquired. The few SD-TIRF microscopes that were described previously^12,13, mainly lack of sufficiently high imaging spe.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Microscope and accessories
SD-TIRF microscope	Visitron Systems
Ti with perfect focus system	Nikon		Inverted microscope stand
CSU-W1 T2	Yokogawa		Spinning disk unit in dual-camera configuration
iLAS2	Roper Scientific		TIRF/FRAP scanner
Evolve	Photometrix		EM-CCD cameras
PiezoZ stage	Ludl Electronic Products		Motorized Z stage
Bioprecision2 XY stage	Ludl Electronic Products		Motorized XY stage
Stage top incubation chamber	Okolab	Bold Line	Temperature, CO2 and humidity supply
Cell culture
HeLa cervical cancer cells	DSMZ	ACC-57
NIH3T3 fibroblasts	DSMZ	ACC-59
Dulbecco's phosphate buffered saline (PBS)	Gibco	14190144
Trypsin-EDTA 0.05%	Gibco	25300054
Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium + GlutaMAX-I (DMEM)	Gibco	31966-021
OptiMEM	Gibco	31985070	Reduced serum medium
Fetal calf serum (FCS)	Gibco	10500064
Penicillin/Streptomycin (PenStrep)	Gibco	15140148
Full growth medium (DMEM supplemented with 10% FCS and 1% PenStrep)
TurboFect	ThermoFisher Scientific	R0531	Transfection reagent
Ascorbic acid (AA)	Sigma	A544-25G
6-well cell culture plate	Sarstedt	83.392
Glass bottom dishes	MatTek	P35G-1.5-10-C	35mm, 0.17mm glass coverslip
Fibronectin, bovine plasma	ThermoFisher Scientific	33010018
Neubauer improved chamber	VWR	631-0696
TetraSpeck beads	ThermoFisher Scientific	T7279
Plasmids
RFP-Lifeact			Maren Rudolph, Institute of Medical Microbiology, University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf, Germany
YFP-Vinculin			Andrea Mordhorst, Institute of Medical Microbiology, University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf, Germany
Software and plugins
VisiView	Visitron Systems		Version 3
ImageJ			Version 1.52c
Turboreg plugin			http://bigwww.epfl.ch/thevenaz/turboreg/
Macro "SD-TIRF_helper_JoVE.ijm"	this publication		https://github.com/bzobiak/ImageJ
Volocity	PerkinElmer		Version 6.2.2