How to visualize the ECM?

Question

Specifically, I'd like to look at changes in HA (hyaluronic acid) production. Most often you only see people staining the cell surface or removing cells from culture for fixation and then imaging. Does anyone know how to analyze the ECM (extracellular matrix) and proteoglycans that surround a cell if you're looking to see if a condition may be changing the way a cell remodels it's ECM? Is it even possible with some fluorescent tags?

Answer 1

Yes. You could use fluorescent analogues of the proteoglycans for this. However, one problem with this is that most microscopes are not able to identify individual proteoglycans in the ECM.

Another technique to determine any changes in the ECM is to use mass spectrometry and gas chromatography to quantify the number of proteoglycans and other substituents of the ECM.