Nanobody Detection of Standard Fluorescent Proteins Enables Multi-Target DNA-PAINT with High Resolution and Minimal Displacement Errors

Abstract

DNA-PAINT is a rapidly developing fluorescence super-resolution technique which allows for reaching spatial resolutions below 10 nm. It also enables the imaging of multiple targets in the same sample. However, using DNA-PAINT to observe cellular structures at such resolution remains challenging. Antibodies, which are commonly used for this purpose, lead to a displacement between the target protein and the reporting fluorophore of 20-25 nm, thus limiting the resolving power. Here, we used nanobodies to minimize this linkage error to ~4 nm. We demonstrate multiplexed imaging by using 3 nanobodies, each able to bind to a different family of fluorescent proteins. We couple the nanobodies with single DNA strands via a straight forward and stoichiometric chemical conjugation. Additionally, we built a versatile computer-controlled microfluidic setup to enable multiplexed DNA-PAINT in an efficient manner. As a proof of principle, we labeled and imaged proteins on mitochondria, the Golgi apparatus, and chromatin. We obtained super-resolved images of the 3 targets with 20 nm resolution, and within only 35 minutes acquisition time.