Continuous improvements in imaging techniques are challenging biologists to search for more accurate methods to label cellular elements. This is particularly relevant for diffraction-unlimited fluorescence imaging, where the perceived resolution is affected by the size of the affinity probes. This is evident when antibodies, which are 10–15 nm in size, are used. Previously it has been suggested that RNA aptamers (~3 nm) can be used to detect cellular proteins under super-resolution imaging. However, a direct comparison between several aptamers and antibodies is needed, to clearly show the advantages and/or disadvantages of the different probes. Here we have conducted such a comparative study, by testing several aptamers and antibodies using stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED). We have targeted three membrane receptors, EGFR, ErbB2 and Epha2, which are relevant to human health, and recycle between plasma membrane and intracellular organelles. Our results suggest that the aptamers can reveal more epitopes than most antibodies, thus providing a denser labeling of the stained structures. Moreover, this improves the overall quality of the information that can be extracted from the images. We conclude that aptamers could become useful fluorescent labeling tools for light microscopy and super-resolution imaging, and that their development for novel targets is imperative.

Stimulation of the B cell antigen receptor (BCR) triggers signaling pathways that promote the differentiation of B cells into plasma cells. Despite the pivotal function of BCR in B cell activation, the organization of the BCR on the surface of resting and antigen-activated B cells remains unclear. Here we show, using STED super-resolution microscopy, that IgM-containing BCRs exist predominantly as monomers and dimers in the plasma membrane of resting B cells, but form higher oligomeric clusters upon stimulation. By contrast, a chronic lymphocytic leukemia-derived BCR forms dimers and oligomers in the absence of a stimulus, but a single amino acid exchange reverts its organization to monomers in unstimulated B cells. Our super-resolution microscopy approach for quantitatively analyzing cell surface proteins may thus help reveal the nanoscale organization of immunoreceptors in various cell types.

Fluorescence microscopy is an invaluable tool to visualize molecules in their biological context with ease and flexibility. However, studies using conventional light microscopy have been limited to the resolution that light diffraction allows (i.e., ~200 nm). This limitation has been recently circumvented by several types of advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques, which have achieved resolutions of up to ~10 nm. The resulting enhanced imaging precision has helped to find important cellular details that were not visible using diffraction-limited instruments. However, it has also revealed that conventional stainings using large affinity tags, such as antibodies, are not accurate enough for these imaging techniques. Since aptamers are substantially smaller than antibodies, they could provide a real advantage in super-resolution imaging. Here we compare the live staining of transferrin receptors (TfnR) obtained with different fluorescently labeled affinity probes: aptamers, specific monoclonal antibodies, or the natural receptor ligand transferrin. We observed negligible differences between these staining strategies when imaging is performed with conventional light microscopy (i.e., laser scanning confocal microscopy). However, a clear superiority of the aptamer tag over antibodies became apparent in super-resolved images obtained with stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy.