Multi-dimensional super-resolution imaging enables surface hydrophobicity mapping.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27929085.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms13544 and PMC identifier 5155161.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Super-resolution microscopy allows biological systems to be studied at the nanoscale, but has been restricted to providing only positional information. Here, we show that it is possible to perform multi-dimensional super-resolution imaging to determine both the position and the environmental properties of single-molecule fluorescent emitters. The method presented here exploits the solvatochromic and fluorogenic properties of nile red to extract both the emission spectrum and the position of each dye molecule simultaneously enabling mapping of the hydrophobicity of biological structures. We validated this by studying synthetic lipid vesicles of known composition. We then applied both to super-resolve the hydrophobicity of amyloid aggregates implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, and the hydrophobic changes in mammalian cell membranes. Our technique is easily implemented by inserting a transmission diffraction grating into the optical path of a localization-based super-resolution microscope, enabling all the information to be extracted simultaneously from a single image plane.