A cyanine dye distinguishes between cycling and non-cycling fibroblasts

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Abstract
The findings that the cell membrane is more highly polarized in resting than in proliferating cells and that cyanine dyes carrying a delocalized positive charge enter live cells to an extent that depends on the cell membrane potential, are used to develop a method of distinguishing between cycling and non-cycling cells. The greater the membrane polarization, the greater is the concentration of dye within the cell. At high concentrations, the dye molecules aggregate and their fluorescence is quenched. For a given external dye concentration, cells of different membrane potential would accumulate different amounts of fluorescent (non-aggregated) dye. Using [human foreskin] fibroblasts in culture conditions chosen to provide various models of cycling and non-cycling cells, it was found that fluorescence intensity with the dye 3,3''-diheptyloxycarbocyanine (Di-O-C7(3)) was consistently greater in the former than the latter.