Circular intensity differential scattering (CIDS) scanning microscopy to image chromatin-DNA nuclear organization

Circular dichroism imaging has proved a powerful and simple method for extracting information on chiral molecules without specific fluorescent labels. Numerous mathematical models show that outside the absorption band, the circular dichroism signal comes from the scattering interaction and brings additional information about the organization of biopolymers. With this article, we propose a fast method to control the polarization states without moving pans, by means of a photoclastic modulator. We implemented the technique on a modified commercial confocal microscope realizing a multimodal configuration. We demonstrate its imaging capabilities by studying the organization of chromatin DNA inside isolated cell nuclei. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement