Newsletter August 2024: Lipid droplets, a window into cellular metabolism and dysfunction

Welcome to the August edition of the AI for Live Cell Insights Newsletter, bringing you the latest live cell analyses powering drug discovery and cosmetics development. Each month, we will explore a new application of AI-based cellular analysis for label-free live cell imaging, with publication highlights and news from Nanolive. This month, we are highlighting live cell imaging’s application in the characterization of lipid droplets in disease, as well as recent publications in the fields of nanomaterials and disease pathology.

Quantifying lipid droplets in fatty liver disease

In a recent paper published in PNAS, a research group at Amgen used Nanolive’s label-free holotomography and automated lipid droplet analysis assay to characterize the effects of a protein variant linked to fatty liver disease.  

Label-free imaging revealed differences in lipid droplet content between untreated cells with the disease-causing variant and wild type cells, and their significance was quantified using the Smart Lipid Droplet Assay’s analysis. Automated segmentation of cells and lipid droplets by the assay revealed significant differences in lipid droplet dry mass and area between untreated cells with the disease-causing variant and wild type cells. In addition, treatment with oleic acid led to a higher rate of lipid droplet dry mass and area increase in the disease-associated cell type over time. 

Read the full publication, ‘The fatty liver disease–causing protein PNPLA3-I148M alters lipid droplet–Golgi dynamics’.

Timelapse imaging and analysis revealed disease-variant I148M cells had both greater lipid droplet dry mass, and lipid droplet area in comparison to wild-type cells, and when treated with oleic acid, the increase in lipid droplet area and dry mass was more rapid in I148M cells (right).

The group have also published further work testing the effect of siRNA conjugates on lipid droplets in their preprint ‘RAB18 Regulates Extrahepatic SiRNA-Mediated Gene Silencing Efficacy’, where they also used Nanolive’s Smart Lipid Droplet Assay LIVE for lipid droplet characterization and quantification. Read the full paper here.

Digital segmentation of lipid droplets in action

Automatic segmentation of lipid droplets (red) performed digitally on holotomographic images by Nanolive’s Smart Lipid Droplet Assay.

Digital segmentation of lipid droplets in action

Explore lipid droplet quantification in more detail with our Application Note, and see how the high-content analysis capabilities of Nanolive’s Smart Lipid Droplet Assay transform research outcomes in specific case studies.

Read the application note here.

Timelapse refractive images overlaid with lipid droplet segmentations (refractive index shown in grayscale, and lipid droplets digitally colored) show the accumulation of lipid droplets during foam macrophage formation.

Online demo

It’s not too late to catch our online demo of the Nanolive imaging platform and software. You can watch on-demand here. 

Latest publication highlights with Nanolive imaging:

• Neuroscience: Fan, W. et al. (2024) ‘Protein nanoparticles induce the activation of voltage-dependent non-selective ion channels to modulate biological osmotic pressure in cytotoxic cerebral edema’, Frontiers in Pharmacology https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2024.1361733  

• Nanomaterials: Thiyagarajan, D. et al. (2024) ‘3D imaging shows nano- and microparticles are internalized by salmon skin and corneal epithelial cells’, Frontiers in Marine Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2024.1422748  

• Macrophage efferocytosis: Zhang, J. et al. (2024) ‘Oxidized LDL regulates efferocytosis through the CD36-PKM2-mtROS pathway’ bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.07.556574  

• Cell characterization: Vizjak, P. et al. (2024) ‘ISWI catalyzes nucleosome sliding in condensed nucleosome arrays’, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-024-01290-x  

• Osteoarthritis: Govindaraj, K. et al. (2024) ‘Osmolarity-Induced Altered Intracellular Molecular Crowding Drives Osteoarthritis Pathology’, Advanced Science  https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202306722  

• Cell cycle: Wang, Z. et al. (2024) ‘ALTMAN: A Novel Method for Cell Cycle Analysis’, ACS Omega https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.4c03653  

Find over 250 publications featuring Nanolive imaging here.

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