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A critique of methods for temperature imaging in single cells

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We argue that standard thermodynamic considerations and scaling laws show that a single cell cannot substantially raise its temperature by endogenous thermogenesis. This statement seriously questions the interpretations of recent work reporting temperature heterogeneities measured in single living cells.

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Figure 1: Temperature mapping in living cells.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Aix-Marseille University A*Midex (ANR-2011-IDEX-0001-02) and Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) grants Tkinet (ANR-2011-BSV5-019-05), France Bio Imaging (ANR-2010-INSB-04-01) and France Life Imaging (ANR-2011-INSB-0006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guillaume Baffou and Hervé Rigneault are at the Institut Fresnel, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Aix-Marseille Université, Centrale Marseille, Marseille, France.,

    Guillaume Baffou & Hervé Rigneault

  2. Didier Marguet is at the Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, Aix-Marseille Université, INSERM, CNRS, Marseille, France.,

    Didier Marguet

  3. Ludovic Jullien is at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, Sorbonne Universités, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Université Paris 06, CNRS, Paris, France.,

    Ludovic Jullien

Authors
  1. Guillaume Baffou
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  2. Hervé Rigneault
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  3. Didier Marguet
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  4. Ludovic Jullien
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Correspondence to Guillaume Baffou.

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Baffou, G., Rigneault, H., Marguet, D. et al. A critique of methods for temperature imaging in single cells. Nat Methods 11, 899–901 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3073

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