TY - JOUR T1 - Bright photoactivatable fluorophores for single-molecule imaging JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/066779 SP - 066779 AU - Jonathan B. Grimm AU - Brian P. English AU - Anand K. Muthusamy AU - Brian P. Mehl AU - Peng Dong AU - Timothy A. Brown AU - Zhe Liu AU - Timothée Lionnet AU - Luke D. Lavis Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/08/04/066779.abstract N2 - 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 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 established live-cell labeling strategies. These compounds retain the superior brightness of the JF dyes but their facile photoactivation enables improved single-particle tracking and localization microscopy experiments. ER -