ArticleJournal of biophotonics2016
Cell nuclei have lower refractive index and mass density than cytoplasm.
Article in Journal of biophotonics, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 82 papers.
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Who cites it
82 citing papers in PubMed.
- Performance improvement of an Au and TiONanoscale advances · 2026Article
- Direct mechanical communication of cellular to nuclear shapes in oocytes.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Getting nuclear size just right - emerging mechanisms regulating nuclear scaling and morphology.Journal of cell science · 2026Review
- Plasmonic imaging of living pancreatic beta-cell networks.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Disordered Glass Nanowire Substrates Produce in Vivo-Like Astrocyte Morphology Revealed by Low-Coherence Holotomography.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Label-free refractive index mapping of human sperm cells.Biomedical optics express · 2025Article
- Conserved nucleocytoplasmic density homeostasis drives cellular organization across eukaryotes.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation from the Viewpoint of Molecular Crowding Environment: A Raman Imaging Study.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2025Review
- Unveiling aging heterogeneities in human dermal fibroblasts via nanosensor chemical cytometry.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Dissecting Morphological and Functional Dynamics of Non-Tumorigenic and Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cell Lines Using PCA and t-SNE Analysis.Cancer reports (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2025Article
- Joint estimation of point spread function and molecule positions in SMLM informed from multiple planes.Biomedical optics express · 2025Article
- Long-term dynamic simulation of cellular systems with inhomogeneous mass distribution.Multibody system dynamics · 2024Article
- Optical characterization of molecular interaction strength in protein condensates.Molecular biology of the cell · 2024Article
- Article
- Optical characterization of molecular interaction strength in protein condensates.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Novel imaging and biophysical approaches to study tissue hydraulics in mammalian folliculogenesis.Biophysical reviews · 2024Review
- Multimodal mechano-microscopy reveals mechanical phenotypes of breast cancer spheroids in three dimensions.APL bioengineering · 2024Article
- Estimation of the mass density of biological matter from refractive index measurements.Biophysical reports · 2024Article
- Genetically encoded lysine photocage for spatiotemporal control of TDP-43 nuclear import.Biophysical chemistry · 2024Article
- Label-free biomedical optical imaging.Nature photonics · 2023Article
22 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Common perception regards the nucleus as a densely packed object with higher refractive index (RI) and mass density than the surrounding cytoplasm. Here, the volume of isolated nuclei is systematically varied by electrostatic and osmotic conditions as well as drug treatments that modify chromatin conformation. The refractive index and dry mass of isolated nuclei is derived from quantitative phase measurements using digital holographic microscopy (DHM). Surprisingly, the cell nucleus is found to have a lower RI and mass density than the cytoplasm in four different cell lines and throughout the cell cycle. This result has important implications for conceptualizing light tissue interactions as well as biological processes in cells.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.