{"id":1659,"date":"2010-07-12T13:26:38","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T17:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmu2.mit.local\/?p=1659"},"modified":"2010-07-12T13:26:38","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T17:26:38","slug":"using-buoyant-mass-to-measure-the-growth-of-single-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmu2.mit.local\/using-buoyant-mass-to-measure-the-growth-of-single-cells\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Buoyant Mass to Measure the Growth of Single Cells"},"content":{"rendered":"
Understanding how the rate of cell growth changes during the cell cycle and in response to growth factors and other stimuli is of fundamental interest. Over the decades, various approaches have been developed for describing cellular growth patterns, but different studies have often reached irreconcilable conclusions, even for the same cell types. Several factors may contribute to the discrepancies between different growth models: i) cells are minute, irregularly shaped objects; ii) proliferating cells increase their size only by a factor of two, so distinguishing between different cell growth models with mathematical rigor requires highly precise measurements; iii) a wide variety of methods have been used to measure growth, including approaches that average across populations as well as those that monitor individual cells; and iv) a cell\u2019s size includes both volume and mass, which can change at different rates.\u00a0 An ideal method for measuring cell growth rates would directly and continuously monitor the mass and volume accumulation of single unperturbed cells with high precision. In recent years, optical microscopy has been the closest match to this ideal, but volume determination by microscopy has lacked the precision to conclusively distinguish between cell-growth models. Potential alternatives include using fluorescent protein reporters that are correlated with cell size5 or using phase microscopy to measure dry mass during cell growth. We have developed a system that can precisely monitor the growth of single cells in terms of buoyant mass and show that bacteria, yeast, and mammalian lymphoblast cells grow at a rate that is proportional to their buoyant mass (Figures 1 and 2). Buoyant mass is dependent on the amount of biomass in the cell, most of which is denser than water, and so is analogous to the dry mass of the cell.<\/p>\n