Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024:2694:133-150.
doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3377-9_7.

Single-Molecule Fluorescence Microscopy in Sensory Cilia of Living Caenorhabditis elegans

Affiliations

Single-Molecule Fluorescence Microscopy in Sensory Cilia of Living Caenorhabditis elegans

Elizaveta Loseva et al. Methods Mol Biol. 2024.

Abstract

Intracellular transport of organelles and biomolecules is vital for several cellular processes. Single-molecule fluorescence microscopy can illuminate molecular aspects of the dynamics of individual biomolecules that remain unresolved in ensemble experiments. For example, studying single-molecule trajectories of moving biomolecules can reveal motility properties such as velocity, diffusivity, location and duration of pauses, etc. We use single-molecule imaging to study the dynamics of microtubule-based motor proteins and their cargo in the primary cilia of living C. elegans. To this end, we employ standard fluorescent proteins, an epi-illuminated, widefield fluorescence microscope, and primarily open-source software. This chapter describes the setup we use, the preparation of samples, a protocol for single-molecule imaging in primary cilia of C. elegans, and data analysis.

Keywords: Caenorhabditis elegans; Live-cell imaging; Single-molecule imaging; Widefield fluorescence microscopy.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Brackley CA, Cates ME, Marenduzzo D (2013) Intracellular facilitated diffusion: searchers, crowders, and blockers. Phys Rev Lett 111(10):108101 - DOI
    1. Hirokawa N et al (2009) Kinesin superfamily motor proteins and intracellular transport. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 10(10):682–696 - DOI
    1. Roberts AJ et al (2013) Functions and mechanics of dynein motor proteins. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 14(11):713–726 - DOI
    1. Prevo B et al (2015) Functional differentiation of cooperating kinesin-2 motors orchestrates cargo import and transport in C. elegans cilia. Nat Cell Biol 17(12):1536–1545 - DOI
    1. Inglis PN et al (2007) The sensory cilia of Caenorhabditis elegans. In: WormBook, pp 1–22

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

LinkOut - more resources