Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy and Tracking with a Fluorescent Mechanosensitive Probe.

A milestone in optical imaging of mechanical forces in cells has been the development of the family of flipper fluorescent probes able to report membrane tension noninvasively in living cells through their fluorescence lifetime. The specifically designed Flipper-CF probe with an engineered inherent blinking mechanism was recently introduced for super-resolution fluorescence microscopy of lipid ordered membranes but was too dim to be detected in lipid disordered membranes at the single-molecule level (García-Calvo, J. 2020, 142(28), 12034-12038).