A zeptoliter volume meter for analysis of single protein molecules.

A central goal in bioanalytics is to determine the concentration of and interactions between biomolecules. Nanotechnology allows performing such analyses in a highly parallel, low-cost, and miniaturized fashion. Here we report on label-free volume, concentration, and mobility analysis of single protein molecules and nanoparticles during their diffusion through a subattoliter detection volume, confined by a 100 nm aperture in a thin gold film. A high concentration of small fluorescent molecules renders the aqueous solution in the aperture brightly fluorescent. Nonfluorescent analytes diffusing into the aperture displace the fluorescent molecules in the solution, leading to a decrease of the detected fluorescence signal, while analytes diffusing out of the aperture return the fluorescence level. The resulting fluorescence fluctuations provide direct information on the volume, concentration, and mobility of the nonfluorescent analytes through fluctuation analysis in both time and amplitude.

Recovery of photoinduced reversible dark States utilized for molecular diffusion measurements.

For a spatially restricted excitation volume, the effective modulation of the excitation in time is influenced by the passage times of the molecules through the excitation volume. By applying an additional time-modulated excitation, the buildup of photoinduced reversible dark states in fluorescent molecules can be made to vary significantly with their passage times through the excitation volume. The variations in the dark state populations are reflected by the time-averaged fluorescence intensity, which thus can be used to characterize the mobilities of the molecules. The concept was experimentally verified by measuring the fluorescence response of freely diffusing cyanine fluorophores (Cy5), undergoing trans-cis isomerization when subject to time-modulated excitation in a focused laser beam. From the fluorescence response, and by applying a simple photodynamic model, the transition times of the Cy5 molecules could be well reproduced when applying different laminar flow speeds through the detection volume. The presented approach puts no constraints on sample concentration, no requirements for high time resolution or sensitivity in the detection, nor requires a high fluorescence brightness of the characterized molecules. This can make the concept useful for a broad range of biomolecular mobility studies.

Iodide as a fluorescence quencher and promoter--mechanisms and possible implications.

In this work, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) was used to investigate the effects of potassium iodide (KI) on the electronic-state population kinetics of a range of organic dyes in the visible wavelength range. Apart from a heavy atom effect promoting intersystem crossing to the triplet states in all dyes, KI was also found to enhance the triplet-state decay rate by a charge-coupled deactivation. This deactivation was only found for dyes with excitation maximum in the blue range, not for those with excitation maxima at wavelengths in the green range or longer. Consequently, under excitation conditions sufficient for triplet state formation, KI can promote the triplet state buildup of one dye and reduce it for another, red-shifted dye. This anticorrelated, spectrally separable response of two different dyes to the presence of one and the same agent may provide a useful readout for biomolecular interaction and microenvironmental monitoring studies. In contrast to the typical notion of KI as a fluorescence quencher, the FCS measurements also revealed that when added in micromolar concentrations KI can act as an antioxidant, promoting the recovery of photo-oxidized fluorophores. However, in millimolar concentrations KI also reduces intact, fluorescently viable fluorophores to a considerable extent. In aqueous solutions, for the dye Rhodamine Green, an optimal concentration of KI of approximately 5 mM can be defined at which the fluorescence signal is maximized. This concentration is not high enough to allow full triplet state quenching. Therefore, as a fluorescence enhancement agent, it is primarily the antioxidative properties of KI that play a role.

Surface-coupled proton exchange of a membrane-bound proton acceptor.

Proton-transfer reactions across and at the surface of biological membranes are central for maintaining the transmembrane proton electrochemical gradients involved in cellular energy conversion. In this study, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy was used to measure the local protonation and deprotonation rates of single pH-sensitive fluorophores conjugated to liposome membranes, and the dependence of these rates on lipid composition and ion concentration. Measurements of proton exchange rates over a wide proton concentration range, using two different pH-sensitive fluorophores with different pK(a)s, revealed two distinct proton exchange regimes. At high pH (> 8), proton association increases rapidly with increasing proton concentrations, presumably because the whole membrane acts as a proton-collecting antenna for the fluorophore. In contrast, at low pH (< 7), the increase in the proton association rate is slower and comparable to that of direct protonation of the fluorophore from the bulk solution. In the latter case, the proton exchange rates of the two fluorophores are indistinguishable, indicating that their protonation rates are determined by the local membrane environment. Measurements on membranes of different surface charge and at different ion concentrations made it possible to determine surface potentials, as well as the distance between the surface and the fluorophore. The results from this study define the conditions under which biological membranes can act as proton-collecting antennae and provide fundamental information on the relation between the membrane surface charge density and the local proton exchange kinetics.

Modulation filtering enables removal of spikes in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy measurements without affecting the temporal information.

The appearance of intensity spikes in measurements is a common problem in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) studies of biological samples. In this work, we present a new method for generating artifact-free correlation curves from fluorescence traces that have undergone spike removal. This method preserves the temporal information throughout the measurement and properly represents the correlation between events separated by removed spikes. The method was validated using experimental data. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated herein to be generally applicable, but it is particularly powerful for cases where spikes occur frequently.

Fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy of a pH-sensitive ratiometric dye for molecular proton exchange studies.

Fluorescence fluctuation analysis of individual pH-sensitive fluorophores has recently proven to be a useful approach for biomolecular proton exchange studies. In this work, dual-color fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy (FCCS) is demonstrated on a ratiometric pH-sensitive dye, for which both the excitation and emission spectra shift as a function of pH. In the FCCS measurements, the fluorescence signal from the predominant emission wavelength range of the protonated form of the dye is cross-correlated with that of the deprotonated form. Two lasers are used alternatingly to excite predominantly the protonated and the deprotonated form of the dye. The alternating excitation modulation scheme is combined with detection gating, and is based on a recently developed concept that allows extraction of correlation data for all correlation times regardless of the chosen modulation period. The scheme can thus be applied without concern for the time-scales of the molecular dynamic processes to be studied. By this combined discrimination based on both excitation and emission, spectral cross-talk is dramatically reduced and a very distinct and unambiguous anticorrelation can be recorded in the correlation curves as a consequence of the proton exchange. The strong discrimination power makes the approach applicable also to ratiometric dyes with less pronounced spectral shifts. It should also be useful in combination with ratiometric dyes sensitive to other ambient conditions and ions, such as the biologically very important calcium ion.

Lateral proton transfer between the membrane and a membrane protein.

Proton transport across biological membranes is a key step of the energy conservation machinery in living organisms, and it has been proposed that the membrane itself plays an important role in this process. In the present study we have investigated the effect of incorporation of a proton transporter, cytochrome c oxidase, into a membrane on the protonation kinetics of a fluorescent pH-sensitive probe attached at the surface of the protein. The results show that proton transfer to the probe was slightly accelerated upon attachment at the protein surface (approximately 7 x 1010 s(-1) M(-1), compared to the expected value of (1-2) x 10(10) s(-1) M(-1)), which is presumably due to the presence of acidic/His groups in the vicinity. Upon incorporation of the protein into small unilamellar phospholipid vesicles the rate increased by more than a factor of 400 to approximately 3 x 10(13) s(-1) M(-1), which indicates that the protein-attached probe is in rapid protonic contact with the membrane surface. The results indicate that the membrane acts to accelerate proton uptake by the membrane-bound proton transporter.

Transient state imaging for microenvironmental monitoring by laser scanning microscopy.

Photoinduced transient dark states are exhibited by practically all common fluorophores. These relatively long-lived states are very sensitive to the local environment and thus highly attractive for microenvironmental imaging purposes. However, because of methodological constraints, their sensitivity has to date been very sparsely exploited. Here, a concept based on spatio-temporal modulation of the excitation intensity is presented that can image these states via their photodynamic fingerprints. With the use of a standard laser scanning microscope, it unites the outstanding environmental sensitivity of the transient state parameters with the high sensitivity of the fluorescence readout and is easily implemented. For demonstration, triplet state images of liposomes with different internal environments were generated. These images provide an example of how local environmental differences can be resolved, which are not clearly distinguishable via other fluorescence parameters. Having minor instrumental and sample constraints the concept can be foreseen to provide several new, useful, and independent fluorescence-based parameters in biomolecular imaging.

Monitoring kinetics of highly environment sensitive states of fluorescent molecules by modulated excitation and time-averaged fluorescence intensity recording.

In this work, a concept is described for how the kinetics of photoinduced, transient, long-lived, nonfluorescent or weakly fluorescent states of fluorophore marker molecules can be extracted from the time-averaged fluorescence by using time-modulated excitation. The concept exploits the characteristic variation of the population of these states with the modulation parameters of the excitation and thereby circumvents the need for time resolution in the fluorescence detection. It combines the single-molecule sensitivity of fluorescence detection with the remarkable environmental responsiveness obtainable from long-lived transient states, yet does not in itself impose any constraints on the concentration or the fluorescence brightness of the sample molecules that can be measured. Modulation of the excitation can be performed by variation of the intensity of a stationary excitation beam in time or by repeated translations of a CW excitation beam with respect to the sample. As a first experimental verification of the approach, we have shown how the triplet-state parameters of the fluorophore rhodamine 6G in different aqueous environments can be extracted. We demonstrate that the concept is fully compatible with low time-resolution detection by a CCD camera. The concept opens for automated transient-state monitoring or imaging on a massively parallel scale and for high-throughput biomolecular screening as well as for more fundamental biomolecular studies. The concept should also be applicable to the monitoring of a range of other photoinduced nonfluorescent or weakly fluorescent transient states, from which subtle changes in the immediate microenvironment of the fluorophore marker molecules can be detected.

Localized proton microcircuits at the biological membrane-water interface.

Cellular processes such as nerve conduction, energy metabolism, and import of nutrients into cells all depend on transport of ions across biological membranes through specialized membrane-spanning proteins. Understanding these processes at a molecular level requires mechanistic insights into the interaction between these proteins and the membrane itself. To explore the role of the membrane in ion translocation we used an approach based on fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. Specifically, we investigated exchange of protons between the water phase and the membrane surface, as well as diffusion of protons along membrane surfaces, at a single-molecule level. We show that the lipid head groups collectively act as a proton-collecting antenna, dramatically accelerating proton uptake from water to a membrane-anchored proton acceptor. Furthermore, the results show that proton transfer along the surface can be significantly faster than that between the lipid head groups and the surrounding water phase. Thus, ion translocation across membranes and between the different membrane protein components is a complex interplay between the proteins and the membrane itself, where the membrane acts as a proton-conducting link between membrane-spanning proton transporters.