PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jonathan B. Grimm
AU  - Brian P. English
AU  - Heejun Choi
AU  - Anand K. Muthusamy
AU  - Brian P. Mehl
AU  - Peng Dong
AU  - Timothy A. Brown
AU  - Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz
AU  - Zhe Liu
AU  - Timothée Lionnet
AU  - Luke D. Lavis
TI  - Bright photoactivatable fluorophores for single-molecule imaging
AID  - 10.1101/066779
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 066779
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/29/066779.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/29/066779.full
AB  - Small molecule fluorophores are important tools for advanced imaging experiments. The development of self-labeling protein tags such as the HaloTag and SNAP-tag has expanded the utility of chemical dyes in live-cell microscopy. We recently described a general method for improving the brightness and photostability of small, cell-permeable fluorophores, resulting in the novel azetidine-containing “Janelia Fluor” (JF) dyes. Here, we refine and extend the utility of the JF dyes by synthesizing photoactivatable derivatives that are compatible with live-cell labeling strategies. These compounds retain the superior brightness of the JF dyes once activated, but their facile photoactivation also enables improved single-particle tracking and localization microscopy experiments.