Photoswitching of monomeric and dimeric DNA-intercalating cyanine dyes for super-resolution microscopy applications

A growing trend in far-field super resolution fluorescence microscopy based on single molecule photoswitching involves the replacement of photoactivatable fluorophores by common organic dyes in which photoswitching reactions or blinking can be induced. This alternative strategy can greatly simplify the sample preparation and imaging scheme in some cases, and enables its application to a wider range of biological systems. This methodology has been applied successfully to unveil the nanoscale organisation of proteins, but little progress has been seen to date in DNA super-resolution imaging. Previous results have shown that blinking can be induced in the DNA-intercalating dimeric dye YOYO-1 in combination with a reducing buffer, and in turn super-resolution images of DNA can be reconstructed. However, monomeric intercalating dyes like YO-PRO-1 are more advantageous for biological applications. This paper shows that both YO-PRO-1 and YOYO-1 can be used in super-resolution imaging, and different sample preparation strategies are compared in terms of spatial resolution and homogeneity of the reconstructed super-resolution images. Moreover, ensemble and single-molecule experiments provide insight into the switching mechanism. The dyes YOYO-1 and YO-PRO-1 hold great potential for their use in nanoscale imaging of DNA topology in biology and nanoscience.