Refractive index tomography of chitin-containing bristles (chaetae) from Platynereis dumerilii

This dataset is a supplementary material including refractive index tomograms of an article 

Ikeda, K., Belevich, I., Zelaya-Lainez, L., Orel, L., Füssl, J., Gumulec, J., Hellmich, C., Jokitalo, E., Raible, F.: Dynamic microvilli sculpt bristles at nanometric scale. Nature Communications 2024.

Biochemical isolation of bristles and imaging

Larvae were washed twice using artificial sea water. The larvae were washed in artificial seawater supplemented with 25mM EGTA, then lysed for 1 hour in Triton X-100 1% in the same buffer on ice. We could observe the appearance of a gel containing bristles. The gel was washed twice in 10 mM Tris-HCl, 2.5 mM MgCl2, 0.5 mM, CaCl2pH 7.6. 50 μL were left inthe sample at the last wash and the gel was digested with 5 U of DNase I (Thermo Fischer Scientific) for 2.5 hours at 37°C with 360 rpm agitation. Next,the digest was supplemented with 100 μL of artificial sea water and digested with 200 μL of 2.5 μg/μL Liberase Enzyme Blend (Sigma-Aldrich) for 1 hour at 50°C. The bristles were washed 3 times in artificial seawater. The isolated bristles were mounted onμ Slide I Luer (Ibidi). The refractive index tomograms of isolated bristles were obtained by Nanolive 3D Cell Explorer with 60X magnification.

The accompanied TIFF is 32-bit, where pixel values correspond to refractive index (e.g. pixel value in image 1.335 = refractive index n). The pixel size is 0.182um,  the Z step is 0.372 um.