Protein clustering on plasma membranes.
© 2011 EPFL
Identification of clustering artifacts in photoactivated localization microscopy.
Fluorescent proteins are known to display in certain cases an on-off blinking and switching behavior. This is particularly important for imaging membrane receptors, for which phenomena such as oligomerization and clustering of proteins can be properly identified only if the number of their constituents is correctly estimated. The groups of Prof. Aleksandra Radenovic (LBEN - Laboratory of Nanoscale Biology) and Prof. Ursula Rothlisberger (LCBC - Laboratory of Computational Chemistry and Biochemistry) compared a negative and a positive clustering control by using labeled plasma membrane–bound proteins to determine how photoblinking or reactivation-induced artifacts may be erroneously interpreted as biological clusters.
Paolo Annibale et al., Nature Methods, doi:10.1038/nmeth.1627 (2011)