Two-photon imaging of multiple fluorescent proteins by phase-shaping and linear unmixing with a single broadband laser.

ABSTRACT

Imaging multiple fluorescent proteins (FPs) by two-photon microscopy has numerous applications for studying biological processes in thick and live samples. Here we demonstrate a setup utilizing a single broadband laser and a phase-only pulse-shaper to achieve imaging of three FPs (mAmetrine, TagRFPt, and mKate2) in live mammalian cells. Phase-shaping to achieve selective excitation of the FPs in combination with post-imaging linear unmixing enables clean separation of the fluorescence signal of each FP. This setup also benefits from low overall cost and simple optical alignment, enabling easy adaptation in a regular biomedical research laboratory.