Observation of living plant cells under conventional brightfield microscopy suffers from low imaging contrast. Therefore, fluorescence labeling or fluorescence tag is typically required, but it may not reflect the bona fide state of cellular events and prevent long-term observation due to photobleaching of the fluorescence signal. Therefore, we propose to use quantitative phase imaging (QPI) for label-free imaging of plant cell structures. Using QPI, we have observed vacuoles and nucleus in tobacco BY-2 cells, Arabidopsis cell suspension culture PSB-D, and pollen tubes.
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