Following on from the popular SiR-Probes, earlier this year Spirochrome introduced new SPY probes, as presented in this post.

Excess of neutral lipids in cells has been found to be a prime suspect in various disease states, from Alzheimer’s to Atherosclerosis. In order to more easily characterize this state, Marker Gene Technology have developed an easy-to-use fluorescent kit to label and differentiate both neutral and polar lipids in live cells.

Despite its importance in the regulation of many cellular processes, membrane tension is still complicated to measure. And despite valuable insights, the techniques currently available remain complex and present technical limitations. To overcome these drawbacks, Spirochrome have developed the first probe for fluorescence microscopy in the field of mechanobiology, that specifically targets the plasma membrane of cells and reports membrane tension through changes in its fluorescence lifetime : the Flipper-TR^® probe.

With their polycationic properties, polyamine organic compounds are involved in various biological functions (DNA-RNA interaction, gene expression…), and can also be considered as cancer marker. In this post, I’m pleased to introduce the first intra-cellular polyamine imaging reagent which works without any pre-treatment or cell lysis. This innovative reagent can be used for live cells, thus making it suitable for detection or semi-quantitative analysis of intra-cellular polyamines.