Circular Intensity Differential Scattering for Label-Free Chromatin Characterization: A Review for Optical Microscopy

Circular Intensity Differential Scattering (CIDS) provides a differential measurement of the circular right and left polarized light and has been proven to be a gold standard label-free technique to study the molecular conformation of complex biopolymers, such as chromatin. In early works, it has been shown that the scattering component of the CIDS signal gives information from the long-range chiral organization on a scale down to 1/10th–1/20th of the excitation wavelength, leading to information related to the structure and orientation of biopolymers in situ at the nanoscale. In this paper, we review the typical methods and technologies employed for measuring this signal coming from complex macro-molecules ordering. Additionally, we include a general description of the experimental architectures employed for spectroscopic CIDS measurements, angular or spectral, and of the most recent advances in the field of optical imaging microscopy, allowing a visualization of the chromatin organization in situ.