Loïc Le Goff - Imaging and Biophysics of Morphogenesis

Adaptive laser dissection

2023 — EPJ Plus. Topics: Smart microscopy, Mechanobiology

Adaptive laser dissection trajectory on a curved epithelial surface
Adaptive laser dissection on a curved tissue. The tissue surface is automatically estimated and the laser follows a 3D trajectory along it, enabling complete multicellular cuts in regions where planar scanning fails.

Laser dissection is widely used to probe mechanical forces in living tissues: after a local cut, the recoil of surrounding cells reveals the tension carried by the tissue. But conventional systems steer the laser in 2D, while embryos and developing tissues are intrinsically curved 3D structures.

We developed an adaptive laser-dissection system that automatically estimates the tissue surface and computes a 3D laser trajectory that follows its shape. This makes it possible to perform multicellular cuts on curved epithelia and probe tissue mechanics where conventional planar scans fail. We demonstrated the approach on the Drosophila wing imaginal disc, using circular dissections to reveal spatial variations and anisotropies in tissue tension.

Publications

Meng, Nuzdhin, Sison, Galland, LeGoff (2023). Adaptive scans allow 3D-targeted laser-dissection to probe the mechanics of cell sheets. EPJ Plus. link