RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Verifying molecular clusters by 2-color localization microscopy and significance testing
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 847012
DO 10.1101/847012
A1 Andreas M. Arnold
A1 Magdalena C. Schneider
A1 Christoph Hüsson
A1 Robert Sablatnig
A1 Mario Brameshuber
A1 Florian Baumgart
A1 Gerhard J. Schütz
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/29/847012.abstract
AB While single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) offers the invaluable prospect to visualize cellular structures below the diffraction limit of light microscopy, its potential could not be fully capitalized due to its inherent susceptibility to blinking artifacts. Particularly, overcounting of single molecule localizations has impeded a reliable and sensitive detection of biomolecular nanoclusters. Here we introduce a 2-Color Localization microscopy And Significance Testing Approach (2-CLASTA), providing a parameter-free statistical framework for the analysis of SMLM data via significance testing methods. 2-CLASTA yields p-values for the null hypothesis of random biomolecular distributions, independent of the blinking behavior of the chosen fluorescent labels. We validated the method both by computer simulations as well as experimentally, using protein concatemers as a mimicry of biomolecular clustering. As the new approach it is not affected by overcounting artifacts, it is able to detect biomolecular clustering of various shapes at high sensitivity down to a level of dimers.