Abstract

Single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) enables the visualization of cellular nanostructures in vitro with sub-20 nm resolution. While substructures can generally be imaged with SMLM, the structural understanding of the images remains elusive. To better understand the link between SMLM images and the underlying structure, we developed a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation based on experimental imaging parameters and geometric information to generate synthetic SMLM imag-es. We chose the nuclear pore complex (NPC), a nanosized channel on the nuclear membrane which gates nucleo-cytoplasmic transport of biomolecules, as a test geometry for testing our MC model. Using the MC model to simulate SMLM images, we first optimized our clustering algorithm to separate >10^6 molecular localizations of fluorescently labeled NPC proteins into hundreds of individual NPCs in each cell. We then illustrated using our MC model to generate cellular sub-structures with different angles of labeling to inform our structural understanding through SMLM images obtained.