Acidic vesicles can be imaged and tracked in live cells after staining with several low molecular weight fluorescent probes, or with fluorescently labeled proteins. Three fluorescent dyes, acridine orange, LysoTracker Red DND-99, and quinacrine, were evaluated as acidic vesicle tracers for confocal fluorescence imaging and quantitative analysis. The stability of fluorescent signals, achievable image contrast, and phototoxicity were taken into consideration. The three tested tracers exhibit different advantages and pose different problems in imaging experiments. Acridine orange makes it possible to distinguish acidic vesicles with different internal pH but is fairly phototoxic and can cause spectacular bursts of the dye-loaded vesicles. LysoTracker Red is less phototoxic but its rapid photobleaching limits the range of useful applications considerably. We demonstrate that quinacrine is most suitable for long-term imaging when a high number of frames is required. This capacity made it possible to trace acidic vesicles for several hours, during a process of drug-induced apoptosis. An ability to record the behavior of acidic vesicles over such long periods opens a possibility to study processes like autophagy or long-term effects of drugs on endocytosis and exocytosis. V C 2014International Society for Advancement of Cytometry
We have recently reported an innovative approach to use charged fluorochromes such as propidium iodide (PI) in the real-time, dynamic cell viability assays. The present study was designed to provide a mechanistic rationale for the kinetic assays using cell permeability markers. Uptake of PI by live cells, effect on the cell cycle, long term proliferation capacity, DNA damage response and pharmacologic interactions with anticancer drugs were studied using both laser scanning microscopy and laser scanning cytometry. Exposure of human carcinomic alveolar basal epithelial A549 cells in cultures to 1.5 or 7.5 µM of PI for 24 h had minimal effect on cell cycle progression including DNA replication as measured by incorporation of 5’-ethynyl-2-deoxyuridine (EdU) detected by the “click chemistry” approach and measured by laser scanning cytometry. A modest reduction, from 44% to 40% or 33%, in frequency of DNA replicating cells was seen after 48 h at 1.5 or 7.5 µM concentration of PI. There was no evidence of increased phosphorylation of histone γH2AX in cells growing in the presence of 1.5 or 7.5 µM of PI for up to 48 h. Confocal image analysis, of HeLa and NIH 3T3 mouse embryonic fibroblasts growing in the presence of PI showed granular distribution in cell cytoplasm suggesting PI accumulation in endosomes and progressive increase in fluorescence of nucleoli reflecting PI binding to nucleolar RNA. The overall responses of cells to cytotoxic agents were also not affected by the growth in the presence PI. Our data lend further support to the notion that propidium iodide can be effectively used in real-time, kinetic viability assays.
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