Discover our FastAct™ live cell actin probes for actin imaging 2.0

FastAct™ is a new and unique fluorescent live cell actin probes design. FastAct™ probes label very dynamic actin filaments as well as the more static ones. Our FastAct™ probes are bright, fluorogenic, cell permeable and highly specific live cell probes for fluorescence imaging of actin. They do not require any transfection and work just by adding the probe to the cells and perform imaging a couple of hours later.

Axonal growth of SPY650-FastAct™ stained chicken dorsal root ganglia neurons in vitro. Movie courtesy of Alexandre Dumoulin, University of Zürich, Switzerland.

Live 2 cell stage mouse embryo stained with SPY555-FastAct™ (blue) and SPY650-DNA (orange) going through synchronized mitosis. Movie courtesy of Blake Hernandez, University of Pennsylvania, United States.

PKmito™ probes for gentle mitochondria imaging are available!

We are proud to announce that the PKmito™ probes for gentle imaging of mitochondria in live cells are now available from our distributors network.

PKmito™ probes have been developed by the lab of Zhixing Chen from Peking University1,2). They were carefully designed to reduce the generation of reactive oxygen species during imaging and allow long-term imaging or timelapse STED imaging in live cells.

Learn more about PKmito™ probes here

1. Liu Tianyan et al. “Multi-color live-cell STED nanoscopy of mitochondria with a gentle inner membrane stain” PNAS (2022):119 (52).
2. Yang, Zhongtian, et al. “Cyclooctatetraene-conjugated cyanine mitochondrial probes minimize phototoxicity in fluorescence and nanoscopic imaging.” Chemical science 11.32 (2020): 8506-8516.

Live HeLa cells labeled with PKmito ORANGE and picogreen (mtDNA). movie adapted from movie S3 from reference 1) above.

Discover Our SPY™ probes

Spirochrome’s SPY™ probes are revolutionary fluorogenic live cell fluorescent probes covering the whole visible spectrum

SPY™ probes are live cell, fluorogenic, photostable and STED/SIM compatible. They keep all the nice properties of our SiR-probes but work in different channels such as FITC, TMR or Texas Red. Probes for DNA (nucleus), actin and microtubules are available.

See our new SPY™ probes here

Flipper-TR® the first fluorescent probe for mechanobiology now available from Spirochrome

Flipper-TR® is a live cell fluorescent membrane tension probe. It is the first fluorescent membrane tension reporter developed for the field of mechanobiology. The fluorescence lifetime of Flipper-TR® is strongly dependent on the membrane tension, therefore through FLIM imaging it is possible to measure precisely the spatio-temporal distribution of tension in membranes. Flipper-TR® opens up a whole new field by giving access to real time membrane tension measurements in live cells.

Find out more about Flipper-TR® here

Discover our SiR probes

Spirochrome’s SiR probes are based on the fluorphore Silicon Rhodamine (SiR). Its key features are 1. cell permeability, 2. fluorogenic character and 3. compatibility with super-resolution microscopy. The fluorescence excitation and emission of SiR are in the far-red, reducing phototoxicity in live-cell imaging experiments. SiR is compatible with most microscopes as it can be used with standard Cy5 settings. The combination of all these properties set SiR-based probes apart from other fluorescent probes. Spirochrome SiR-probes work as simple as “add and image”

Spirochrome provides live cell imaging probes for DNA, Actin, Microtubules and lysosomes that are available in two colors: SiR and SiR700

Discover our products here

Drosophila hind gut stained with SiR-actin

SiR fluorophore and reagents

Spirochrome provides SiR-reagents for the preparation protein, nucleic acid, peptide or small molecules SiR-conjugates creating tailor-made probes. Currently, carboxylic acid, NHS ester, maleimide, alkyne, azide, tetrazine and BCN derivatives of SiR are available.

Discover SiR-reagents products here

Alternatively, our chemists can provide you with custom SiR-derivatives and conjugates. Please contact us.