On the impact of competing intra- and intermolecular triplet-state quenching on photobleaching and photoswitching kinetics of organic fluorophores

Smit, Jochem H. ; Velde, Jasper H. M. van der; Huang, Jingyi; Trauschke, Vanessa; Henrikus, Sarah S.; Chen, Si; Eleftheriadis, Nikolaos; Warszawik, Eliza M.; Herrmann, Andreas und Cordes, Thorben (2019): On the impact of competing intra- and intermolecular triplet-state quenching on photobleaching and photoswitching kinetics of organic fluorophores. In: Physical chemistry chemical physics : PCCP, Bd. 21, Nr. 7: S. 3721-3733

Abstract

While buffer cocktails remain the most commonly used method for photostabilization and photoswitching of fluorescent markers, intramolecular triplet-state quenchers emerge as an alternative strategy to impart fluorophores with 'self-healing' or even functional properties such as photoswitching. In this contribution, we evaluated combinations of both approaches and show that inter- and intramolecular triplet-state quenching processes compete with each other. We find that although the rate of triplet-state quenching is additive, the photostability is limited by the faster pathway. Often intramolecular processes dominate the photophysical situation for combinations of covalently-linked and solution-based photostabilizers and photoswitching agents. Furthermore we show that intramolecular photostabilizers can protect fluorophores from reversible off-switching events caused by solution-additives, which was previously misinterpreted as photobleaching. Our studies also provide practical guidance for usage of photostabilizer-dye conjugates for STORM-type super-resolution microscopy permitting the exploitation of their improved photophysics for increased spatio-temporal resolution. Finally, we provide evidence that the biochemical environment, e.g., proximity of aromatic amino-acids such as tryptophan, reduces the photostabilization efficiency of commonly used buffer cocktails. Not only have our results important implications for a deeper mechanistic understanding of self-healing dyes, but they will provide a general framework to select label positions for optimal and reproducible photostability or photoswitching kinetics in different biochemical environments.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• EU Funded Grant Agreement Number: 638536
• EU-Projekte: Horizon 2020 > ERC Grants > ERC Starting Grant > ERC Grant 638536: SM-IMPORT - Substrate import at work: single-molecule studies of ABC transporters
• Publikationsform: Publisher's Version
• Fakultät: Biologie > Department Biologie I
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 570 Biowissenschaften; Biologie
• Sprache: Englisch