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Optical plasticity of mammalian cells
Author(s) -
Subramanian Kaushikaram,
Petzold Heike,
Seelbinder Benjamin,
Hersemann Lena,
Nüsslein Ina,
Kreysing Moritz
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of biophotonics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.877
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1864-0648
pISSN - 1864-063X
DOI - 10.1002/jbio.202000457
Subject(s) - chinese hamster ovary cell , microbiology and biotechnology , biology , phenotype , cell culture , opacity , microscopy , evolutionary biology , gene , genetics , optics , physics
Transparency is widespread in nature, ranging from transparent insect wings to ocular tissues that enable you to read this text, and transparent marine vertebrates. And yet, cells and tissue models in biology are usually strongly light scattering and optically opaque, precluding deep optical microscopy. Here we describe the directed evolution of cultured mammalian cells toward increased transparency. We find that mutations greatly diversify the optical phenotype of Chinese Hamster Ovary cells, a cultured mammalian cell line. Furthermore, only three rounds of high‐throughput optical selection and competitive growth are required to yield fit cells with greatly improved transparency. Based on 15 monoclonal cell lines derived from this directed evolution experiment, we find that the evolved transparency frequently goes along with a reduction of nuclear granularity and physiological shifts in gene expression profiles. In the future this optical plasticity of mammalian cells may facilitate genetic clearance of living tissues for in vivo microscopy.