Optical phenotyping of human mitochondria in a biocavity laser

We report a new nanolaser technique for measuring characteristics of human mitochondria. Because mitochondria are so small, it has been difficult to study large populations using standard light microscope or flow cytometry techniques. We recently discovered a nanooptical transduction method for high-speed analysis of submicrometer organelles that is well suited to mitochondrial studies. This ultrasensitive detection technique uses nanosqueezing of light into photon modes imposed by the ultrasmall organelle dimensions in a semiconductor biocavity laser. In this paper, we use the method to study the lasing spectra of normal and diseased mitochondria. We find that the diseased mitochondria exhibit larger physical diameter and standard deviation. These morphological differences are also revealed in the lasing spectra. The diseased specimens have a larger spectral linewidth than normal, and have more variability in their statistical distributions.