A BODIPY‐Cyclooctyne for Protein Imaging in Live Cells

Abstract

Cellular proteins that bear reactive azides can be imaged by fluorescence microscopy following strain-promoted ligation to cyclooctyne dyes. Here we describe BODIPY-cyclooctyne (BDPY), a membrane-permeant fluorophore that can be used to label intracellular proteins in live mammalian cells. Flow cytometry reveals fluorescence signals more than 25-fold above background after labeling of azide-tagged cells with BDPY.