Development of high-speed ion conductance microscopy for mapping interfacial physical and chemical properties of living cells at the nanoscale.

Abstract

Visualizing dynamic behavior of biological processes occurring on plasma membranes of living cells with nanometer scale resolution is recognized to be quite difficult because of extremely fragile structures of plasma membranes as well as living cells itself. To visualize them, In this study, we developed high-speed ion conductance microscopy (HS-SICM). We will show HS-SICM movies that capture dynamic morphological changes of nanostructures on plasma membranes of living cells. In addition, we will show method to map of surface elastic responses of living cells with nanometer scale resolution by HS-SICM.