Volume 35, Number 6, 533-547, DOI: 10.1007/s00249-005-0040-8

Published in partnership with

Logo

European Biophysical Societies' Association

Detecting fluorescent protein expression and co-localisation on single secretory vesicles with linear spectral unmixing

Fabien Nadrigny, Isabelle Rivals, Petra G. Hirrlinger, Annette Koulakoff, Léon Personnaz, Marine Vernet, Myriam Allioux, Myriam Chaumeil, Nicole Ropert and Christian Giaume, et al.

View Related Documents

Abstract

Many questions in cell biology and biophysics involve the quantitation of co-localisation and the interaction of proteins tagged with different fluorophores. However, the incomplete separation of the different colour channels due to the presence of autofluorescence, along with cross-excitation and emission “bleed-through” of one colour channel into the other, all combine to render the interpretation of multi-band images ambiguous. Here we introduce a new live-cell epifluorescence spectral imaging and linear unmixing technique for classifying resolution-limited point objects containing multiple fluorophores. We demonstrate the performance of our technique by detecting, at the single-vesicle level, the co-expression of the vesicle-associated membrane protein, VAMP-2 (also called synaptobrevin-2), linked to either enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) or citrine [a less pH-sensitive variant of enhanced yellow fluorescent protein (EYFP)], in mouse cortical astrocytes. In contrast, the co-expression of VAMP-2-citrine and the lysosomal transporter sialine fused to EGFP resulted in little overlap. Spectral imaging and linear unmixing permit us to fingerprint the expression of spectrally overlapping fluorescent proteins on single secretory organelles in the presence of a spectrally broad autofluorescence. Our technique provides a robust alternative to error-prone dual- or triple colour co-localisation studies.

Keywords  Spectral imaging - Linear unmixing - Fluorescence microscopy - Total internal reflection - Exocytosis - Protein expression - Co-localisation

Fulltext Preview

Image of the first page of the fulltext document