Wide-field fluorescence lifetime imaging of single molecules with a gated single-photon camera
Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) is a powerful tool to discriminate fluorescent molecules or probe their nanoscale environment. Traditionally, FLIM uses time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC), which is precise but intrinsically low-throughput due to its dependence on point detectors. Although time-gated cameras have demonstrated the potential for high-throughput FLIM in bright samples with dense labeling, their use in single-molecule microscopy has not been explored extensively. Here, we report fast and accurate single-molecule FLIM with a commercial time-gated single-photon camera. Our optimized acquisition scheme achieves single-molecule lifetime measurements with a precision only about three times less than TCSPC, while imaging with a large number of pixels (512 × 512) allowing for the spatial multiplexing of over 3000 molecules. With this approach, we demonstrate parallelized lifetime measurements of large numbers of labeled pore-forming proteins on supported lipid bilayers, and temporal single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer measurements at 5-25 Hz. This method holds considerable promise for the advancement of multi-target single-molecule localization microscopy and biopolymer sequencing.
2-s2.0-105012545603
40754532
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
University of Fribourg
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Indian Institute of Science
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
University of Fribourg
2025-12-01
14
1
258
REVIEWED
EPFL
| Funder | Funding(s) | Grant Number | Grant URL |
EPFL Center for Imaging | |||
National Center of Competence in Research Bio-Inspired Materials | |||
European Research Council | 101020445 | ||
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