4.6 Review

The Benefits of Unnatural Amino Acid Incorporation as Protein Labels for Single Molecule Localization Microscopy

Journal

FRONTIERS IN CHEMISTRY
Volume 9, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fchem.2021.641355

Keywords

unnatural (non-canonical) amino acids; single molecule localization microscopy; fluorescent protein; unnatural amino acid incorporation; stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy; photo-activated localization microscopy; self-labeling protein tag

Funding

  1. Australian Research Council (ARC) [CE140100011]
  2. National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia [APP1163814, APP1183588]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Single Molecule Localization Microscopy (SMLM) is an imaging method that allows visualization of structures smaller than the diffraction limit of light. Incorporating unnatural amino acids (UAAs) with attached fluorescent dyes for protein labeling enables precise localization and visualization of individual molecules. Comparing this method with other protein-based labeling techniques, the site-specific incorporation of UAAs coupled with fluorescent dyes in SMLM has both benefits and shortcomings.
Single Molecule Localization Microscopy (SMLM) is an imaging method that allows for the visualization of structures smaller than the diffraction limit of light (similar to 200 nm). This is achieved through techniques such as stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) and photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM). A large part of obtaining ideal imaging of single molecules is the choice of the right fluorescent label. An upcoming field of protein labeling is incorporating unnatural amino acids (UAAs) with an attached fluorescent dye for precise localization and visualization of individual molecules. For this technique, fluorescent probes are conjugated to UAAs and are introduced into the protein of interest (POI) as a label. Here we contrast this labeling method with other commonly used protein-based labeling methods such as fluorescent proteins (FPs) or self-labeling tags such as Halotag, SNAP-tags, and CLIP-tags, and highlight the benefits and shortcomings of the site-specific incorporation of UAAs coupled with fluorescent dyes in SMLM.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.6
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available