Dual-Activatable Cell Tracker for Controlled and Prolonged Single-Cell Labeling

Cell trackers are fluorescent chemical tools that facilitate imaging and tracking cells within live organisms. Despite their versatility, these dyes lack specificity, tend to leak outside of the cell, and stain neighboring cells. Here, we report a dual-activatable cell tracker for increased spatial and temporal staining control, especially for single-cell tracking. This probe overcomes the typical problems of current cell trackers: off-target staining, high background signal, and leakage from the intracellular medium. Staining with this dye is not cytotoxic, and it can be used in sensitive primary cells. Moreover, this dye is resistant to harsh fixation and permeabilization conditions and allows for multi-wavelength studies with confocal microscopy and fluorescence-activated cell sorting. Using this cell tracker, we performed in vivo homing experiments in mice with primary splenocytes and tracked a single cell in a heterogeneous, multicellular culture environment for over 20 h. These experiments, in addition to comparative proliferation studies with other cell trackers, demonstrated that the signal from this dye is retained in cells for over 72 h after photoactivation. We envision that this type of probes will facilitate the analysis of single-cell behavior and migration in cell culture and in vivo experiments.