Cellular signaling reactions translate changing internal and external environments to initiate a cellular response. They regulate all aspects of human physiology, serving as the foundation for hormone and neurotransmitter release, the heartbeat, vision, fertilization, and cognitive function. Disruption of these signaling cascades can have severe consequences in the form of pathophysiological conditions including cancer, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease. For decades, biological and medical investigators have successfully used fluorescent proteins, probes, and biosensors coupled with fluorescence microscopy as the primary tools to understand the precise spatial and temporal organization of these cellular signals.
The strengths of optical techniques such as epifluorescence, confocal, or total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy are their sensitivity, speed, and compatibility with live cell imaging, while the major limitation is their diffraction-limited resolution, meaning structures or protein complexes smaller than 200-250 nm cannot be resolved. With the theoretical and practical development of deterministic super-resolution (e.g., stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED1), structured illumination microscopy (SIM2) or stochastic super-resolution (e.g., photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM3), or ground state depletion (GSD4,5)), lateral and axial resolution in fluorescence microscopy has been extended beyond the diffraction barrier, to the order of tens of nanometers. Thus, investigators now have the unparalleled ability to visualize and understand how protein dynamics and organization translates to function at the near-molecular level.
Ground state depletion microscopy followed by individual molecule return (GSDIM), or simply GSD as it is known, circumvents the diffraction limit by reducing the number of simultaneously emitting fluorophores4,5. High energy laser light is used to excite the fluorophore-labelled sample, bombarding electrons with photons and increasing the probability they will undergo a 'spin-flip' and enter the triplet or 'dark-state' from the excited state4. This effectively depletes the ground state, hence the name 'ground state depletion'. In the triplet state, fluorophores do not emit photons and the sample appears dimmer. However, these fluorophores stochastically return to the ground state and can go through several photon emitting excited-to-ground state transitions before returning to the triplet state. With less fluorophores emitting at any given time, photon bursts emitted from individual fluorophores become spatially and temporally distinct from neighboring fluorophores. The burst of photons can be fit with a gaussian function, the calculated centroid of which corresponds to the position of the fluorophore with a localization precision that is dependent on the numerical aperture (NA) of the lens, the wavelength of light used for excitation and crucially, the number of photons emitted per fluorophore. One limitation of GSD is that, since only a subset of fluorophores actively emits at any time, thousands of images must be collected over several minutes to build up a complete localization map. The long acquisition time combined with the high laser power requirement, means that GSD is better suited to fixed rather than live samples.
This article, describes the preparation of fixed samples for super-resolution microscopy imaging of membrane and endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-resident proteins (for a list of necessary consumables and reagents see the Table of Materials). Examples of how this protocol can be easily adapted to quantify the size and degree of clustering of L-type voltage-gated Ca2+ channels (Cav1.2) in the sarcolemma of cardiac myocytes, or used to visualize the cellular distribution of the ER, are demonstrated. Understanding the distribution and organization of these cellular components is critically important in understanding the initiation, translation, and ultimately the function of many Ca2+-dependent signaling cascades. For example, Cav1.2 channels are fundamentally important for excitation-contraction coupling, while receptor-mediated Ca2+ release from the ER is perhaps the most ubiquitous signaling cascade in mammalian cells.