A high-throughput electron tomography workflow reveals over-elongated centrioles in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma

Electron microscopy is the gold standard to characterize centrosomal ultrastructure. However, production of significant morphometrical data is highly limited by acquisition time. We therefore developed a generalizable, semi-automated high-throughput electron tomography strategy to study centrosome aberrations in sparse patient-derived cancer cells at nanoscale. As proof of principle, we present electron tomography data on 455 centrioles of CD138(pos) plasma cells from one patient with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma and CD138(neg) bone marrow mononuclear cells from three healthy donors as a control. Plasma cells from the myeloma patient displayed 122 over-elongated centrioles (48.8%). Particularly mother centrioles also harbored gross structural abnormalities, including fragmentation and disturbed microtubule cylinder formation, while control centrioles were phenotypically unremarkable. These data demonstrate the feasibility of our scalable high-throughput electron tomography strategy to study structural centrosome aberrations in primary tumor cells. Moreover, our electron tomography workflow and data provide a resource for the characterization of cell organelles beyond centrosomes.