PUBLICATION
BODIPY-cholesterol: A new tool to visualize sterol trafficking in living cells and organisms
- Authors
- Hölttä-Vuori, M., Uronen, R.L., Repakova, J., Salonen, E., Vattulainen, I., Panula, P., Li, Z., Bittman, R., and Ikonen, E.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-080728-8
- Date
- 2008
- Source
- Traffic (Copenhagen, Denmark) 9(11): 1839-1849 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Panula, Pertti
- Keywords
- live cell imaging, fluorescence microscopy, molecular modeling, lipid probes, sterol distribution
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Biological Transport
- Boron Compounds/chemistry*
- CHO Cells
- Cholesterol/chemistry*
- Cricetinae
- Cricetulus
- Fluorescent Dyes
- Immunohistochemistry
- Sterols/metabolism*
- Zebrafish
- PubMed
- 18647169 Full text @ Traffic
Citation
Hölttä-Vuori, M., Uronen, R.L., Repakova, J., Salonen, E., Vattulainen, I., Panula, P., Li, Z., Bittman, R., and Ikonen, E. (2008) BODIPY-cholesterol: A new tool to visualize sterol trafficking in living cells and organisms. Traffic (Copenhagen, Denmark). 9(11):1839-1849.
Abstract
Analysis of sterol distribution and transport in living cells has been hampered by the lack of bright, photostable fluorescent sterol derivatives that closely resemble cholesterol. Here, we employed atomistic simulations and experiments to characterize a cholesterol compound with fluorescent dipyrrometheneboron difluoride linked to sterol carbon-24 (BODIPY-cholesterol). This probe packed in the membrane and behaved similarly to cholesterol both in normal and cholesterol storage disease cells, and with trace amounts allowed the visualization of sterol movement in living systems. Upon injection into the yolk sac, BODIPY-cholesterol did not disturb zebrafish development and was targeted to sterol-enriched brain regions in live fish. We conclude that this new probe closely mimics the membrane partitioning and trafficking of cholesterol, and due to its excellent fluorescent properties, enables the direct monitoring of sterol movement by time-lapse imaging using trace amounts of the probe. This is, to our knowledge, the first cholesterol probe that fulfills these prerequisites.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping