Abstract. We propose a new, simple theory-based, accurate polarization microscope for birefringence imaging of cytoskeletal structures of biological cells. The new theory lets us calculate very easily the phase retardation and the orientation of the principal axis of a particular area of a biological living cell in media by simply measuring the intensity variation of a pixel of a CCD camera while rotating a single polarizer. Just from the measured intensity maxima and minima, the amount of phase retardation ␦ between the fast and the slow axis of the sample area is obtained with an accuracy of 5.010± 0.798ϫ 10 −3 rad. The orientation of the principal axis is calculated from the angle of the polarizer for the intensity maximum. We have compared our microscopes with two previously reported polarization microscopes for birefringence imaging of cytoskeletal structures and demonstrated the utility of our microscope with the phase retardation and orientation images of weakly invasive MCF7 and highly invasive MDA MB 231 human breast cancer cells as an example.

The vibrational spectral differences of normal and lung cancer cells were studied for the development of effective cancer cell screening by means of attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy. The phosphate monoester symmetric stretching νs(PO32-) band intensity at ~970 cm-1 and the phosphodiester symmetric stretching νs(PO2-) band intensity at ~1,085 cm-1 in nucleic acids and phospholipids appeared to be significantly strengthened in lung cancer cells with respect to the other vibrational bands compared to normal cells. This finding suggests that more extensive phosphorylation occur in cancer cells. These results demonstrate that lung cancer cells may be prescreened using infrared spectroscopy tools.

Prohibitin (PHB) is a multifunctional protein conserved in eukaryotic systems and shows various expression levels in tumor cells. However, regulation of PHB is not clearly understood. Here, we focused on the regulation of PHB expression by Wnt signaling, one of dominant regulatory signals in various leukemic cells. High mRNA levels of PHB were found in half of clinical leukemia samples. PHB expression was increased by inhibition of the MAPK pathway and decreased by activation of EGF signal. Although cell proliferating signals downregulated the transcription of PHB, treatment with lithium chloride, an analog of the Wnt signal, induced PHB level in various cell types. We identified the TCF-4/LEF-1 binding motif, CATCTG, in the promoter region of PHB by site-directed mutagenesis and ChIP assay. This β-catenin-mediated activation of PHB expression was independent of c-MYC activation, a product of Wnt signaling. These data indicate that PHB is a direct target of β-catenin and the increased level of PHB in leukemia can be regulated by Wnt signaling.

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