Photoconvertible diazaxanthilidene dyes for live cell imaging

Within the past two decades, photoconvertible fluorescent proteins (PC-FPs) have emerged as a class of useful proteins for the visualization and tracking of individual cells, complex cellular mechanisms, protein-protein interactions, and other dynamic processes. Despite the utility of these proteins, they are inherently limited by a number of factors including large size and inflexibility of tag location within a protein of interest. The following chapter describes the discovery and use of a small molecule photoconvertible dye based on the novel diazaxanthilidene scaffold. The diazaxanthilidene dye presented in this chapter is shown to be an effective alternative to well-known PC-FPs for spatiotemporally controlled cell labeling experiments.