Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering Microscopy of Cellular Lipid Storage

With the increasing number of studies using nonlinear microscopy in the biosciences, an awareness for the potentials of nonlinear optics has begun to emerge among a broader audience. Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy is one of the most technically challenging methods in this category, forming images of molecular distributions based on their vibrations by a multiphoton interaction process. The primary strength of CARS microscopy lies in the ability of imaging lipids; the full 3-D distribution in living cells can be mapped without exogenous tags. Thus, CARS microscopy has a strong potential to become a central instrument for in vivo studies of the lipid metabolism at cellular level, improving present understanding of the mechanisms behind the many metabolism-related diseases, the impact of natural bioactive components in foods, and supporting the development of efficient pharmaceuticals as well as bioengineering processes exploiting the metabolism of microorganisms for the production of alternative energy sources. We illustrate this wide range of biological applications of CARS microscopy with a series of examples from our research.