Cy3-Cy5 covalent heterodimers for single-molecule photoswitching.

ABSTRACT: Covalent heterodimers of the Cy3 and Cy5 fluorophores have been prepared from commercially available starting materials and characterized at the single-molecule level. This system behaves as a discrete molecular photoswitch, in which photoexcitation of the Cy5 results in fluorescence emission or, with a much lower probability, causes the Cy5 to enter into a long-lived, but metastable, dark state. Photoinduced recovery of the emissive Cy5 is achieved by very low intensity excitation (5 W cm(-2)) of the Cy3 fluorophore at a shorter wavelength. A similar system consisting of proximal, but not covalently linked, Cy3 and Cy5 has found application in stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), a single-molecule localization-based technique for super-resolution imaging that requires pho

SUBMITTER: Conley NR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2715847 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature