A highly specific gold nanoprobe for live-cell single-molecule imaging.

Cécile Leduc, Satyabrata Si, Jérémie Gautier, Martinho Soto-Ribeiro, Bernhard Wehrle-Haller, Alexis Gautreau, Grégory Giannone, Laurent Cognet, Brahim Lounis
Nano Lett.. 2013-03-06; 13(4): 1489-1494
DOI: 10.1021/nl304561g

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1. Nano Lett. 2013 Apr 10;13(4):1489-94. doi: 10.1021/nl304561g. Epub 2013 Mar 6.

A highly specific gold nanoprobe for live-cell single-molecule imaging.

Leduc C(1), Si S, Gautier J, Soto-Ribeiro M, Wehrle-Haller B, Gautreau A,
Giannone G, Cognet L, Lounis B.

Author information:
(1)LP2N, Université de Bordeaux, Institut d’Optique & CNRS UMR 5298, Talence,
France.

Single molecule tracking in live cells is the ultimate tool to study subcellular
protein dynamics, but it is often limited by the probe size and photostability.
Because of these issues, long-term tracking of proteins in confined and crowded
environments, such as intracellular spaces, remains challenging. We have
developed a novel optical probe consisting of 5 nm gold nanoparticles
functionalized with a small fragment of camelid antibodies that recognize widely
used green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) with a very high affinity, which we call
GFP-nanobodies. These small gold nanoparticles can be detected and tracked using
photothermal imaging for arbitrarily long periods of time. Surface and
intracellular GFP-proteins were effectively labeled even in very crowded
environments such as adhesion sites and cytoskeletal structures both in vitro and
in live cell cultures. These nanobody-coated gold nanoparticles are probes with
unparalleled capabilities; small size, perfect photostability, high specificity,
and versatility afforded by combination with the vast existing library of
GFP-tagged proteins.

DOI: 10.1021/nl304561g
PMID: 23458263 [Indexed for MEDLINE]

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