ChromoBlog

Cell cycle and cell proliferation are tightly controlled cellular processes, and their deregulation is a hallmark of cancer. To enable non-invasive analysis of cell cycle in living cells, ChromoTek developed a Cell Cycle Chromobody. The Cell Cycle Chromobody (CCC) consists of a binding domain of a heavy-chain antibody highly specific against human proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), which is genetically fused to a fluorescent protein.

The ChromoTek Actin Chromobody is a live-cell probe for visualization of the actin cytoskeleton and monitoring its dynamics. The Actin Chromobody enables non-invasive labeling of actin microfilaments not only in mammalian cells, but also in cells and tissues of evolutionary distant species, such as Zebrafish (Panza et al. 2015) or plants (Rocchetti, Hawes, and Kriechbaumer 2014). The Z-stack shows confocal images of optical sections of Actin Chromobody in a Hela cell.

ChromoTek Nano-Boosters are ideal for Super-Resolution and “traditional” fluorescence microscopy because of their high affinity and extremely small size of just 2 to 3 nm. Technically speaking, the GFP-and RFP-Boosters are composed of the highly specific GFP- or RFP-binding domains of alpaca antibodies (also called “nanobodies”), covalently coupled to a selection of fluorescent dyes.

We want to cordially thank all attendees of the last week's ChromoTek seminars!

Chromotek’s tiniest GFP-binding alpaca antibodies (also termed nanobodies) are now available conjugated to the Abberior STAR dyes. We developed these new GFP-Boosters to achieve the highest resolution and the best signal in STED imaging of GFP-fusion proteins. The new Boosters are the combination of:

-        Chromotek’s anti-GFP alpaca antibody fragments, which are characterized by the nanomolar affinity to GFP and extraordinarily small size (13 kDa, 2 X 3 nm)

and

-        STED-optimized far-red dyes from Abberior: Abberior STAR RED or Abberior STAR 635P.

Today, Eric Betzig, Stefan W Hell and William E Moerner were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for surpassing the limitations of light microscopy (www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2014/press.html). ChromoTek cordially congratulates the laureates of this most prestigious science award. We are especially happy for our prominent customer, friend and endorser Stefan Hell! Stefan pioneered the nanoscopy world and we are delighted that his work and the stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy method developed by him have now received this high recognition.