2020, Frawley, Andrew T., Wycisk, Virginia, Xiong, Yaoyao, Galiani, Silvia, Sezgin, Erdinc, Urbančič, Iztok, Vargas Jentzsch, Andreas, Leslie, Kathryn G., Eggeling, Christian, Anderson, Harry L.

Dyads consisting of a photochromic switch covalently linked to a fluorescent dye allow the emission from the dye to be controlled by reversible photoisomerization of the switch; one form of the switch quenches fluorescence by accepting energy from the dye. Here we investigate the use of dyads of this type for super-resolution imaging of lipid bilayers. Giant unilamellar vesicles stained with the dyads were imaged with about a two-fold resolution-enhancement compared with conventional confocal microscopy. This was achieved by exciting the fluorophore at 594 nm, using a switch activated by violet and red light (405/640 nm). This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.