Quantifying nanoscopic alterations associated with mitochondrial dysfunction using three-dimensional single-molecule localization microscopy.

PubMed ID: 38495683

Author(s): Brenner B, Xu F, Zhang Y, Kweon J, Fang R, Sheibani N, Zhang SX, Sun C, Zhang HF. Quantifying nanoscopic alterations associated with mitochondrial dysfunction using three-dimensional single-molecule localization microscopy. Biomed Opt Express. 2024 Feb 12;15(3):1571-1584. doi: 10.1364/BOE.510351. eCollection 2024 Mar 1. PMID 38495683

Journal: Biomedical Optics Express, Volume 15, Issue 3, Mar 2024

Mitochondrial morphology provides unique insights into their integrity and function. Among fluorescence microscopy techniques, 3D super-resolution microscopy uniquely enables the analysis of mitochondrial morphological features individually. However, there is a lack of tools to extract morphological parameters from super-resolution images of mitochondria. We report a quantitative method to extract mitochondrial morphological metrics, including volume, aspect ratio, and local protein density, from 3D single-molecule localization microscopy images, with single-mitochondrion sensitivity. We validated our approach using simulated ground-truth SMLM images of mitochondria. We further tested our morphological analysis on mitochondria that have been altered functionally and morphologically in controlled manners. This work sets the stage to quantitatively analyze mitochondrial morphological alterations associated with disease progression on an individual basis.