HaloFlippers: A General Tool for the Fluorescence Imaging of Precisely Localized Membrane Tension Changes in Living Cells.

ABSTRACT: Tools to image membrane tension in response to mechanical stimuli are badly needed in mechanobiology. We have recently introduced mechanosensitive flipper probes to report quantitatively global membrane tension changes in fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) images of living cells. However, to address specific questions on physical forces in biology, the probes need to be localized precisely in the membrane of interest (MOI). Herein we present a general strategy to image the tension of the MOI by tagging our newly introduced HaloFlippers to self-labeling HaloTags fused to proteins in this membrane. The critical challenge in the construction of operational HaloFlippers is the tether linking the flipper and the HaloTag: It must be neither too taut nor too loose, be hydrophilic but

SUBMITTER: Strakova K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7453570 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature