Lensless Tomographic Imaging of Near Surface Structures of Frozen Hydrated Malaria-Infected Human Erythrocytes by Coherent X-Ray Diffraction Microscopy.

ABSTRACT: Lensless, coherent X-ray diffraction microscopy has been drawing considerable attentions for tomographic imaging of whole human cells. In this study, we performed cryogenic coherent X-ray diffraction imaging of human erythrocytes with and without malaria infection. To shed light on structural features near the surface, "ghost cells" were prepared by the removal of cytoplasm. From two-dimensional images, we found that the surface of erythrocytes after 32 h of infection became much rougher compared to that of healthy, uninfected erythrocytes. The Gaussian roughness of an infected erythrocyte surface (69 nm) is about two times larger than that of an uninfected one (31 nm), reflecting the formation of protein knobs on infected erythrocyte surfaces. Three-dimensional tomography further enables

SUBMITTER: Frank V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5658481 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature