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• LumiTracker® Lyso Red

LumiTracker® Lyso Red

LumiTracker Lyso Red is a red-fluorescent dye that selectively accumulates in cellular organelles with low internal pH. Particularly, it is used to stain lysosomes in living cells which maintain a low internal pH, i.e. an acidic environment, by an ATP-dependent proton pump providing optimal conditions for the activity of digestive enzymes.

This dye is suitable for vital staining; it permeates cell membrane of living cells without using additional detergents. Because the core part of the dye structure belongs to the BDP family, it exhibits strong hydrophobic properties, which provides good permeability through cell membrane. In addition, the dye has an amino group acting as a weak base. It is not fully protonated at neutral pH and the dye molecule remains relatively uncharged facilitating better passing through the membrane. Presumably, after getting into the lysosome acidic environment the dye might become protonated and thus retains inside the acidic compartment.

The dye is taken up by living cells in a short time and the protonation of the dye promotes local alkalizing, so it is recommended to perform staining of living cells for no more than 7 minutes just before visualization. It is possible to fix cells after treatment with LumiTracker Lyso Red, however the level of background staining becomes higher. Generally, despite the high selectivity of the dye for lysosomes, it is recommended mostly for the imaging purposes and is not intended to quantify lysosomes.

LumiTracker Lyso Red exhibits an absorption maximum at 577 nm and emission maximum at 590 nm. We also offer LumiTracker Lyso Green for lysosome imaging in the green channel (absorption and emission maxima are at 504 nm and 511 nm, respectively).

LumiTracker Lyso Red is supplied as a 1 mM solution in DMSO.

Usage

Working concentration: 50–75 nM.*

Staining: 3–7 minutes at 37 °C in 1× PBS (just before visualization).

*depending on the cell line, working concentration or incubating time may be changed

LysoTracker™ is a registered trademark of Molecular Probes Inc. in some countries.