Live Cell Imaging Stains Applicable in Super-resolution Microscopy and Animal Imaging

What is the context?

Recent years have witnessed the development of highly innovative super-resolution microscopy techniques, including STED (stimulated emission depletion), MINFLUX (minimal fluorescence photon fluxes microscopy), PALM (photoactivated localisation microscopy), STORM (stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy), GSDIM (ground state depletion microscopy), SIM (structured illumination microscopy) and RESOLFT (reversible saturable optical fluorescence transition microscopy). These methods enable imaging at resolutions surpassing the diffraction limit of light. However, not all fluorescent staining tools compatible with conventional microscopy are suitable for these advanced technologies.

What is the poster about?

We present in this poster a range of live-cell imaging stains specifically optimised for super-resolution microscopy. The LIVE series of stains, developed by abberior, is designed for both STED and confocal microscopy, available in a broad spectrum of emission wavelengths, and supplied as ready-to-use reagents for labelling cellular structures such as mitochondria, membrane, nucleus (DNA) and cytoskeleton (actin and tubulin). For even greater experimental flexibility, live-cell compatible LIVE-ligands are also available for self-labelling protein tags such as Halo and SNAP.

While these solutions represent a significant advance for live-cell super-resolution microscopy, in vivo imaging requires approaches tailored to more complex experimental conditions, particularly when imaging deep within tissues. In animal imaging, applications are often restricted by the limited availability of stains in the far-red region, which are essential for visualising processes deep within living tissues, for example, via SWIR (shortwave infrared fluorescence) imaging. We introduce the CJ215 developed by Proimaging with an absorption maximum at 800 nm and specifically optimised for tumour delineation in both NIR and SWIR imaging. CJ215 is a non-conjugated fluorophore that shows specific affinity to tumour tissue in direct use. This dye has been validated across multiple in vivo tumour models, including breast, pancreatic, prostate, colon and fibrosarcoma.