The role of pneumococcal extracellular vesicles on the pathophysiology of the kidney disease hemolytic uremic syndrome.

-induced hemolytic uremic syndrome (Sp-HUS) is a kidney disease characterized by microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, and acute kidney injury. This disease is frequently underdiagnosed and its pathophysiology is poorly understood. In this work, we compared clinical strains, isolated from infant Sp-HUS patients, with a reference pathogenic strain D39, for host cytotoxicity and further explored the role of Sp-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) in the pathogenesis of an HUS infection.

Motion artefact detection in structured illumination microscopy for live cell imaging.

The reconstruction process of structured illumination microscopy (SIM) creates substantial artefacts if the specimen has moved during the acquisition. This reduces the applicability of SIM for live cell imaging, because these artefacts cannot always be recognized as such in the final image. A movement is not necessarily visible in the raw data, due to the varying excitation patterns and the photon noise.

Optical Sectioning and High Resolution in Single-Slice Structured Illumination Microscopy by Thick Slice Blind-SIM Reconstruction.

The microscope image of a thick fluorescent sample taken at a given focal plane is plagued by out-of-focus fluorescence and diffraction limited resolution. In this work, we show that a single slice of Structured Illumination Microscopy (two or three beam SIM) data can be processed to provide an image exhibiting tight sectioning and high transverse resolution. Our reconstruction algorithm is adapted from the blind-SIM technique which requires very little knowledge of the illumination patterns.

fastSIM: a practical implementation of fast structured illumination microscopy.

A significant improvement in acquisition speed of structured illumination microscopy (SIM) opens a new field of applications to this already well-established super-resolution method towards 3D scanning real-time imaging of living cells. We demonstrate a method of increased acquisition speed on a two-beam SIM fluorescence microscope with a lateral resolution of ~100 nm at a maximum raw data acquisition rate of 162 frames per second (fps) with a region of interest of 16.5  ×  16.

Simple structured illumination microscope setup with high acquisition speed by using a spatial light modulator.

We describe a two-beam interference structured illumination fluorescence microscope. The novelty of the presented system lies in its simplicity. A programmable spatial light modulator (ferroelectric LCoS) in an intermediate image plane enables precise and rapid control of the excitation pattern in the specimen.