Photonics probing of pup brain tissue and molecular-specific nuclear nanostructure alterations due to fetal alcoholism via light scattering/localization approaches

• Published in: Journal of biomedical optics 2022-07, Vol.27 (7), p.076002-076002
• Main Authors: Adhikari, Prakash, Shukla, Pradeep K., Alharthi, Fatemah, Bhandari, Shiva, Meena, Avtar S., Rao, Radhakrishna, Pradhan, Prabhakar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abnormalities; Alcoholism; Animal tissues; Brain; Cameras; Chromatin; Congenital diseases; Density; DNA probes; Fetal alcohol syndrome; Fetuses; Fluctuations; Histones; Imaging; Imaging techniques; Light; Light scattering; Localization; Medical imaging; Mesoscopic physics; Mothers; Neuroimaging; Neurological diseases; Photonics; Physics; Refractivity; Spectroscopy; Spectrum analysis; Teratogenicity
• ISSN: 1083-3668; 1560-2281
• DOI: 10.1117/1.JBO.27.7.076002

Significance: Light is a good probe for studying the nanoscale-level structural or molecular-specific structural properties of brain cells/tissue due to stress, alcohol, or any other abnormalities. Chronic alcoholism during pregnancy, i.e., fetal alcoholism, being teratogenic, results in fetal alcohol syndrome, and other neurological disorders. Understanding the nano-to-submicron scale spatial structural properties of pup brain cells/tissues using light/photonic probes could provide a plethora of information in understanding the effects of fetal alcoholism. Aim: Using both light scattering and light localization techniques to probe alterations in nano- to-submicron scale mass density or refractive index fluctuations in brain cells/tissues of mice pups, exposed to fetal alcoholism. Approach: We use the mesoscopic physics-based dual spectroscopic imaging techniques, partial wave spectroscopy (PWS) and molecular-specific inverse participation ratio (IPR) using confocal imaging, to quantify structural alterations in brain tissues and chromatin/histone in brain cells, respectively, in 60 days postnatal mice pup brain, exposed to fetal alcoholism. Results: The finer focusing PWS analysis on tissues shows an increase in the degree of structural disorder strength in the pup brain tissues. Furthermore, results of the molecular-specific light localization IPR technique show an increase in the degree of spatial molecular mass density structural disorder in DNA and a decrease in the degree in histone. Conclusions: In particular, we characterize the spatial pup brain structures from the molecular to tissue levels and address the plausible reasons for such as mass density fluctuations in fetal alcoholism.