New probes for imaging lipid droplets
Nathan Aknine, a PhD student in the Photoactive Materials and Bioimaging team, recently published a paper with his supervisor Andrey Klymchenko, presenting innovative probes for imaging lipid droplets (LDs) in living cells. These new solvatochromic dyes, based on naphthalene and fluorene cores with a trifluoroacetyl group, enable high-precision detection of the local polarity of LDs and reveal features such as lipid unsaturation and chain length.
These probes mark a significant advance in research into metabolic and cellular processes, offering greater resolution and sensitivity than traditional dyes such as Nile Red. The study also reveals that the polarity in the core of LDs can be influenced by fatty acid regimes, opening up new perspectives for cell biology research.
Nathan Aknine and Andrey S. Klymchenko. Push–Pull Fluorescent Dyes with Trifluoroacetyl Acceptor for High-Fidelity Sensing of Polarity and Heterogeneity of Lipid Droplets. Anal. Chem. 2024, 96, 32, 13242–13251
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.4c02322
A new concept in fluorescent probes for cell membranes
In a second publication, Nathan Aknine with Rémi Pelletier and Andrey Klymchenko present a new approach to labelling cell membranes using innovative fluorescent probes called MemGraft. Unlike conventional probes, these new ones bind covalently to membrane proteinsafter transient anchoring to the lipid membrane, guaranteeing enhanced stability even under complex conditions such as fixation and permeabilization.
MemGraft probes also enable barcoding of multiple cell populations on different colors, and offer long-term tracking of cells in co-culture, without loss of signal. This innovation paves the way for applications in cell surfaces engineering, video imaging and studies requiring long-term cell tracking.
Lipid-directed covalent fluorescent labeling of plasma membranes for long-term imaging, barcoding and manipulation of cells
Nathan Aknine, Remi Pelletier, Andrey S. Klymchenko
bioRxiv 2024.07.28.605476; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.28.605476
