Dyes for 405nm excitation

This is a summary of information Kurt Thorn collected in 2007 for dyes that could be used with 405 nm laser excitation.

Molecular Probes has some nice options that fill this niche (for a general overview see the Handbook):

Dye	Excitation	Emission
Alexa Fluor 405	402 nm	421 nm
Pacific Blue	410 nm	455 nm
Pacific Orange	405 nm	551 nm
Cascade Yellow	410 nm	550 nm

The Alexa 405 and Pacific Blue dyes should work well with the existing blue channel on our confocals; with the Pacific Orange and Cascade Yellow dyes it may be possible to use the 405 nm laser excitation with green detection enabling multiplexing.

All of these are available as antibody conjugates except Cascade Yellow. For a table of available antibody conjugates, see here.

Atto 425 outperforms Pacific Blue and Alexa 405 as phalloidin conjugates under 405 nm excitation (Eric Griffis, U. Dundee, on Confocal listserv).

CF405S, from Biotium, has a similar spectrum to Alexa 405, and is available as additional conjugates, and so may also be a good option for some experiments. Their CF405M is a Pacific Blue substitute.

Dylight 405 is another Alexa 405 substitute.

Brilliant Violet is a new dye in this spectral region that claims to be much brighter.

• Note: We have had some users test BV421 with decent success. Always better if it is a more prominent signal and on a more sensitive camera (i.e. EMCCD).