Digital holographic microscopy of the myelin figure structural dynamics and the effect of thermal gradient

Myelin figures (MFs) are cylindrical multilamellar lipid tubes that can be found in various healthy and diseased living cells. Their formation and dynamics involve some of the most mysterious configurations that lipid molecules can adopt under certain conditions. They have been studied with different microscopy methods. Due to the frequent coiling of their structure, the usual methods of microscopy fail to give precise quantitative information about their dynamics. In this paper, we introduced Digital Holographic Microscopy (DHM) as a useful method to calculate the precise dynamical volume, thickness, surface and length of the myelin figures. As an example of DHM imaging of myelin figures, their structure and growth rate in the presence and absence of temperature gradient have been studied in this work. We showed that the thickness of a myelin figure can be changed during the first few seconds. However, after approximately ten seconds, the thickness stabilizes and does not alter significantly. We further studied the effect of the thermal gradient on the length growth. The calculation of the length growth from the measurement of the myelin figure volume shows that the length (L) grows in time (t) as L ∝ t at the early stage of the myelin protrusion in both the presence and the absence of the thermal gradient. However, thermal gradient facilitates the growth and increases its rate.