Going cresyl for plant cell imaging

The advent of fluorescent probes and the characterization of their photochemical properties in the past years allowed significant advances in the studies of spatiotemporal cellular processes within complex and crowded systems. Dyes are indeed extremely useful tools for the visualization of cellular and subcellular structures present in living cells, as well as to study their dynamic and molecular composition or physiological changes. There are some areas of plant cell biology that have been more challenging to explore due to the physiology and organization of certain endomembrane compartments. In this study we characterize the labeling properties of cresyl violet as quick and inexpensive imaging agent for tracking endosomes, vacuole compartments which are usually very differentiated and categorized as more acidic as well as acidic plant compartments. Its photobleaching, labelling and cytotoxic properties are compared with other well-known and currently most used synthetic and molecular probes.