Fluorophore-labelled RNA aptamers to common protein tags as super-resolution imaging reagents [article]

Juan Wang, Avtar Singh, Abdullah Ozer, Warren R Zipfel
2020 bioRxiv   pre-print
Developing labelling methods that densely and specifically label targeted cellular structures is critically important for centroid localization-based super-resolution microscopy. Being easy and inexpensive to produce in the laboratory and of relatively small size, RNA aptamers have potential as a substitute for conventional antibody labelling. By using aptamers selected against common protein tags - GFP (green fluorescent protein) in this case - we demonstrate labelling methods using
more » ... atible fluorophores for STORM and hybridizable imager strands for DNA-PAINT super-resolution optical imaging of any cellular proteins fused to the aptamer binding target. We show that we can label both extracellular and intracellular proteins for super-resolution imaging, and that the method in particular, offers some interesting advantages for live cell super-resolution imaging of plasma membrane proteins.
doi:10.1101/2020.02.27.968578 fatcat:bzz5zrkjurdyviytpfowavi7cu