Cell‐permeable organic fluorescent probes for live‐cell super‐resolution imaging of actin filaments

Abstract BACKGROUND The recently developed super‐resolution microscopy has been applied to characterize the nanometer‐scale structure of actin filaments in live cells, owing to its live‐cell imaging ability at sub‐diffraction resolution. However, there are still some limitations to existing live‐cell labeling methods for super‐resolution imaging of F‐actin. RESULTS A series of cell‐permeable fluorescent probes was developed for super‐resolution imaging of actin filaments with the introduction of a cell‐penetrating peptide, (rR) 3 R 2 . These probes are highly specific, multicolor available and suitable for different cell lines. With these probes, we resolve actin filaments at spatial resolution of ca 60 nm in live‐cell super‐resolution imaging. CONCLUSIONS Our results here extensively expand the types of probes for live‐cell super‐resolution imaging of F‐actin and open up a new avenue in the design of cell‐permeable fluorescent probes. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry