Design of spontaneously blinking fluorophores for live-cell super-resolution imaging based on quantum-chemical calculations.

Spontaneously blinking fluorophores are powerful tools for live-cell super-resolution imaging under physiological conditions. Here we show that quantum-chemical calculations can predict key parameters for fluorophore design. We applied this methodology to develop a spontaneously blinking fluorophore with yellow fluorescence for super-resolution imaging of microtubules in living cells.