Extending the spatiotemporal resolution of super-resolution microscopies using photomodulatable fluorescent proteins

Abstract

In the past two decades, various super-resolution (SR) microscopy techniques have been developed to break the diffraction limit using subdiffraction excitation to spatially modulate the fluorescence emission. Photomodulatable fluorescent proteins (FPs) can be activated by light of specific wavelengths to produce either stochastic or patterned subdiffraction excitation, resulting in improved optical resolution. In this review, we focus on the recently developed photomodulatable FPs or commonly used SR microscopies and discuss the concepts and strategies for optimizing and selecting the biochemical and photophysical properties of PMFPs to improve the spatiotemporal resolution of SR techniques, especially time-lapse live-cell SR techniques.