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Ultrasensitive optical imaging with lanthanide lumiphores

Nature Chemical Biology volume 14, pages 15–21 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

In principle, the millisecond emission lifetimes of lanthanide chelates should enable their ultrasensitive detection in biological systems by time-resolved optical microscopy. In practice, however, lanthanide imaging techniques have provided no better sensitivity than conventional fluorescence microscopy. Here, we identified three fundamental problems that have impeded lanthanide microscopy: low photon flux, inefficient excitation, and optics-derived background luminescence. We overcame these limitations with a new lanthanide imaging modality, transreflected illumination with luminescence resonance energy transfer (trLRET), which increases the time-integrated signal intensities of lanthanide lumiphores by 170-fold and the signal-to-background ratios by 75-fold. We demonstrate that trLRET provides at least an order-of-magnitude increase in detection sensitivity over that of conventional epifluorescence microscopy when used to visualize endogenous protein expression in zebrafish embryos. We also show that trLRET can be used to optically detect molecular interactions in vivo. trLRET promises to unlock the full potential of lanthanide lumiphores for ultrasensitive, autofluorescence-free biological imaging.

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Figure 1: Time-resolved lanthanide detection and LRET enhancement.
Figure 2: LRET-enhanced time-resolved imaging of lanthanide-functionalized beads.
Figure 3: Optics and lanthanide photoluminescence overlap temporally and spectrally.
Figure 4: QSL transreflected illumination overcomes optics-derived photoluminescence.
Figure 5: QSL excitation dramatically increases lanthanide excitation rates.
Figure 6: trLRET enables ultrasensitive lanthanide imaging in vivo.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to the memory of M. Buchin, whose technical expertise was invaluable for this project. We also thank D. Callard and J. Stepkowski (Stanford Photonics) for their assistance with our ICCD camera, C. Limouse for discussions about optical design and alignment, and D. Fitzpatrick and G. Gatmaitan (IOS Optics) for the design and fabrication of TiO2-coated coverglasses. This work was supported by a Samsung Scholarship (U.C.), a Stanford School of Medicine Dean's Fellowship (P.C.), the National Institutes of Health (DP1 HD075622 to J.K.C. and U01 HL099997 to P.B.H.), the National Science Foundation (CHE-1344038 to J.K.C.), and a Stanford ChEM-H Institute Seed Grant (J.K.C. and P.B.H.).

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Author notes

  1. Daniel P Riordan

    Present address: 10X Genomics, Pleasanton, California, USA

  2. Kiranmai S Kocherlakota

    Present address: Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub and Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University School of Engineering, Stanford, California, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA

    Ukrae Cho, Paulina Ciepla, Kiranmai S Kocherlakota & James K Chen

  2. Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA

    Daniel P Riordan & Pehr B Harbury

  3. Department of Developmental Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA

    James K Chen

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Contributions

K.S.K. and J.K.C. built the time-resolved LED epifluorescence microscope; P.B.H. conceived the LRET-enhanced imaging by tuning lanthanide-lumiphore lifetimes; U.C. and P.B.H. conceived, designed, and built the QSL transreflected-illumination system; U.C., D.P.R., P.C., K.S.K., J.K.C., and P.B.H. designed the experiments; U.C. and P.C. performed the imaging experiments; U.C., D.P.R., P.C., K.S.K., J.K.C., and P.B.H. analyzed data; U.C., J.K.C., and P.B.H. wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to James K Chen or Pehr B Harbury.

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Cho, U., Riordan, D., Ciepla, P. et al. Ultrasensitive optical imaging with lanthanide lumiphores. Nat Chem Biol 14, 15–21 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.2513

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