The Bioengineering and Nanosciences Laboratory and the Charles Coulomb Laboratory are launching a microscope that is the only one of its kind in France
It is now possible to capture images of the mechanical state of cells at the University of Montpellier thanks to the Brillouin microscope for biology, which was developed by the Bioengineering and Nanoscience Laboratory and the Charles Coulomb Laboratory. The Brillouin microscope will be inaugurated on June 27, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. at the Triolet campus during the Brillouin imaging training days.
Mechanobiology is an emerging scientific field at the intersection of biology, engineering, chemistry, and physics. It focuses on how physical forces and changes in the mechanical properties of cells and tissues contribute to development, cell differentiation, physiology, and disease.
The role and importance of the mechanical properties of cells and tissues in cellular function, as well as in development and disease, have been widely recognized. However, the standard techniques currently used to assess them have limitations. Recently, Brillouin microscopy has emerged as a non-destructive, label-free, and non-contact method capable of probing the viscoelastic properties of biological samples with sub-micrometer resolution in 3D. This has attracted increased attention from the entire scientific community.
An innovation in the field of mechanobiology
Brillouin microscopy, which has long been used in materials science, is now rapidly expanding into the field of biology thanks to advances in certain optical components. This technique has numerous applications, including the study of the stiffness of healthy and diseased cells, their interactions, and their dynamics under various conditions.
Above are the first images of cells captured using the Brillouin microscope developed by a team at L2C, in collaboration with LBN. Here, the image shows a stem cell found in the tooth (dental pulp). This allows the image to be segmented based on the stiffness of the different compartments. This opens up a vast field of applications and insights into biological phenomena at the cellular level, and numerous collaborations are currently underway.