ArticleCommunications biology2025
Microtubules as a versatile reference standard for expansion microscopy.
Article in Communications biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- ONE microscopy.Nature protocols · 2026Review
- Resolving endogenous protein organization in cells with nanometer resolution.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Single-Step Expansion SMLM Enables Molecular-Resolution Imaging in Cells and Isolated Proteins.Chemical & biomedical imaging · 2026Article
- Thousandfold Expansion Microscopy.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Artificial Intelligence for Discovery in Life Sciences.Bioconjugate chemistry · 2026Review
- Organization of Myosin H in the Apical Complex ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Review of expansion microscopy combined with advanced imaging modalities.Journal of microscopy · 2026Review
- High Precision Antibody-Free Microtubule Labeling for Expansion Microscopy.Bio-protocol · 2025Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Expansion microscopy (ExM) is continually improving, and new ExM variants need to be validated on well-defined biological structures. There is no consensus on validation structures for ExM, especially as nuclear pore complexes or DNA nanorulers are not popular for ExM studies. Here we propose that microtubules should be used for ExM validation. The diameter of microtubules immunostained using primary and secondary antibodies is sufficiently large for the validation of techniques with resolutions better than 50 nm. For techniques with higher precision (up to ~10 nm), microtubules can be assembled and imaged in vitro, using a protocol that we introduce here. Alternatively, a cellular extraction procedure can be employed, followed by labeling the peptide chains of the tubulin molecules with NHS-ester fluorophores. Finally, for nanometer-scale techniques, single tubulin molecules can be analyzed. We conclude that microtubules are valuable structures for the validation of ExM and related technologies.
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Registered trials
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