Comparing lifeact and phalloidin for super-resolution imaging of actin in fixed cells

Hanieh Mazloom-Farsibaf, Farzin Farzam, Mohamadreza Fazel, Michael J Wester, Marjolein B M Meddens, Keith A Lidke*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Visualizing actin filaments in fixed cells is of great interest for a variety of topics in cell biology such as cell division, cell movement, and cell signaling. We investigated the possibility of replacing phalloidin, the standard reagent for super-resolution imaging of F-actin in fixed cells, with the actin binding peptide 'lifeact'. We compared the labels for use in single molecule based super-resolution microscopy, where AlexaFluor 647 labeled phalloidin was used in a dSTORM modality and Atto 655 labeled lifeact was used in a single molecule imaging, reversible binding modality. We found that imaging with lifeact had a comparable resolution in reconstructed images and provided several advantages over phalloidin including lower costs, the ability to image multiple regions of interest on a coverslip without degradation, simplified sequential super-resolution imaging, and more continuous labeling of thin filaments.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0246138
Number of pages13
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume16
Issue number1 January
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Jan 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Actin Cytoskeleton/chemistry
  • Carbocyanines/chemistry
  • HeLa Cells
  • Humans
  • Microscopy, Fluorescence
  • Phalloidine/chemistry

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