%0 Journal Article
%T Squaraine Dyes Exhibit Spontaneous Fluorescence Blinking That Enables Live-Cell Nanoscopy.
%A Zhao B
%A Guan D
%A Liu J
%A Zhang X
%A Xiao S
%A Zhang Y
%A Smith BD
%A Liu Q
%J Nano Lett
%V 0
%N 0
%D 2024 Apr 8
%M 38588010
%F 12.262
%R 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c00595
%X Hampered by their susceptibility to nucleophilic attack and chemical bleaching, electron-deficient squaraine dyes have long been considered unsuitable for biological imaging. This study unveils a surprising twist: in aqueous environments, bleaching is not irreversible but rather a reversible spontaneous quenching process. Leveraging this new discovery, we introduce a novel deep-red squaraine probe tailored for live-cell super-resolution imaging. This probe enables single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) under physiological conditions without harmful additives or intense lasers and exhibits spontaneous blinking orchestrated by biological nucleophiles, such as glutathione or hydroxide anion. With a low duty cycle (∼0.1%) and high-emission rate (∼6 × 104 photons/s under 400 W/cm2), the squaraine probe surpasses the benchmark Cy5 dye by 4-fold and Si-rhodamine by a factor of 1.7 times. Live-cell SMLM with the probe reveals intricate structural details of cell membranes, which demonstrates the high potential of squaraine dyes for next-generation super-resolution imaging.