Multimodal Dyes: Toward Correlative Two-Photon and Electron Microscopy

Nowadays, many crucial biological questions involve the observation of biological samples at different scales. Thus, optical microscopy can be associated to magnetic nuclear imaging allowing access to data from the cellular to the organ level, or can be associated to electron microscopy to reach the sub cellular level. We will describe here the design, synthesis and characterization of new bimodal probes, which can be used as dye in two-photon excited microscopy (TPEM) and electron dense markers in scanning and transmission electron microscopy (EM). In a first part, we will describe new molecular dyes with small organic systems grafted on metal atoms (Pt, Au). Such systems show good two-photon induced fluorescence and two-photon images of HeLa cells will be presented. In a second part, we will present hybrid organic-inorganic fluorescent systems with diketopyrrolopyrole-based dye grafted on iron oxide-silica core shell nanoparticles by peptide bond. Such systems present high two-photon absorption cross sections and good fluorescence quantum yields. These nanoparticles are rapidly internalized in HeLa cells and high quality two-photon images were performed with low laser power. Then we will present our results on correlative light-electron microscopy were two-photon and electron microscopy (both scanning and transmission) images were obtained on the same biological sample.