Understanding three-dimensional human brain organoids through structural analysis by X-ray scattering

The goal of this experiment is to use X-ray imaging techniques to enhance the understanding of grown brain tissue cultures (“organoids”). To better mimic the 3d nature of tissues, organoids can be grown as spheres. However, standard imaging methods are insufficient to understand their growing process and architecture.
X-ray nano-holotomography (XNH) can reveal the 3d-anatomy of brain organoids, to access the spatial distribution of cells and further characteristics related to tissue-growing. The here-presented XNH-data have been collected at the ID16A-beamline. Being sensitive to the electron density using XNH, we do not only identify cells in general with distinct grayvalues, but have also access to the chromatin packing and through that, potentially, to the sequencing activity. In order to better understand this signal and to access the chromatin conformation in greater detail, we want to do correlative small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) on 2d-sections.