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Local pH Monitoring of Small Cluster of Cells using a Fiber-Optic Dual-Core Micro-Probe
Sensors and Actuators, B: Chemical
  • Sisi Chen
  • Qingbo Yang, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Hai Xiao, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Honglan Shi, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Yinfa Ma, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Abstract

Biological studies of tissues and cells have enabled numerous discoveries, but these studies still bear potential risks of invalidation because of cell heterogeneity. Through high-accuracy techniques, recent studies have demonstrated that discrepancies do exist between the results from low-number-cell studies and cell-population-based results. Thus the urgent need to re-evaluate key principles on limited number of cells has been provoked. In this study, a novel designed dual-core fiber-optic pH micro-probe was fabricated and demonstrated for niche environment pH sensing with high spatial resolution. An organic-modified silicate (OrMoSils) sol-gel thin layer was functionalized by entrapping a pH indicator, 2', 7'-Bis (2-carbonylethyl)-5(6)-carboxyfluorescein (BCECF), on a ~70 µm sized probe tip. Good linear correlation between fluorescence ratio of I560nm/I640nm and intercellular pH values was obtained within a biological-relevant pH range from 6.20 to 7.92 (R2 = 0.9834), and with a pH resolution of 0.035 ± 0.005 pH units. The probe's horizontal spatial resolution was demonstrated to be less than 2 mm. Moreover, the probe was evaluated by measuring the localized extracellular pH changes of cultured human lung cancer cells (A549) when exposed to titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs). Results showed that the probe has superior capability for fast, local, and continual monitoring of a small cluster of cells, which provides researchers a fast and accurate technique to conduct local pH measurements for cell heterogeneity-related studies.

Department(s)
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Second Department
Chemistry
Comments
This work was supported by the National Institute of Health (NIH, 1R21GM104696-01).
Keywords and Phrases
  • Cell heterogeneity,
  • Fiber-optic sensor,
  • Local/niche environment sensing,
  • Organic modified silicates (OrMoSils),
  • pH micro-probe,
  • TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) cytotoxicity
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Publication Date
3-1-2017
Publication Date
01 Mar 2017
PubMed ID
28533632
Citation Information
Sisi Chen, Qingbo Yang, Hai Xiao, Honglan Shi, et al.. "Local pH Monitoring of Small Cluster of Cells using a Fiber-Optic Dual-Core Micro-Probe" Sensors and Actuators, B: Chemical Vol. 241 (2017) p. 398 - 405 ISSN: 0925-4005
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/honglan-shi/74/