Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences, Volume. 18, Issue 3, 2441003(2025)

Clickable HaloTag ligands for live cell labeling and imaging

Yunhe Luo, Siyu Zhou, Mingyue Gong, Changfeng Wu, and Xiaofeng Fang*
Author Affiliations
  • Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Biomaterials, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, Guangdong, P. R. China
  • show less

    Self-labeling protein (SLP) tags, such as HaloTag, have gained considerable interest as advanced tools for live cell labeling. However, the chloroalkane-based substrates that can be directly used for protein labeling are limited. Here, we report two bioorthogonal small molecule linkers, chloroalkane-tetrazine (CA-Tz) and chloroalkane-azide (CA-N3), which can penetrate cell membranes and facilitate click chemistry-based labeling in live cells. We compare their labeling capability using two clickable silicon rhodamine dyes (SiR-PEG3-TCO and SiR-PEG4-DBCO). Confocal imaging results demonstrate that using CA-Tz and SiR-PEG3-TCO dye exhibits superior intracellular labeling with low nonspecific signals. We subsequently compared the photostability of SiR dyes with that of green fluorescent proteins (mEmerald). Total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) imaging indicates that SiR dyes exhibit superior photostability under identical excitation conditions, making them suitable for long-term cell imaging. Furthermore, SiR dyes labeling also shows high structure retention for the fourth-order super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI) compared to fluorescent proteins. This study presents clickable HaloTag linkers as effective tools for live cell labeling and imaging, highlighting the high-quality labeling of chloroalkane linkers and clickable dyes for live cell imaging.

    Tools

    Get Citation

    Copy Citation Text

    Yunhe Luo, Siyu Zhou, Mingyue Gong, Changfeng Wu, Xiaofeng Fang. Clickable HaloTag ligands for live cell labeling and imaging[J]. Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences, 2025, 18(3): 2441003

    Download Citation

    EndNote(RIS)BibTexPlain Text
    Save article for my favorites
    Paper Information

    Category: Research Articles

    Received: Aug. 27, 2024

    Accepted: Sep. 10, 2024

    Published Online: Jun. 18, 2025

    The Author Email: Xiaofeng Fang (fangxf@sustech.edu.cn)

    DOI:10.1142/S1793545824410037

    Topics