Fluorescence fluctuation methods in biophysical research

Date

Nov 1, 2011

Time

4:40 PM - 6:10 PM

Speaker

Dr. Zdenek Petrasek

Affiliation

BIOTEC , TU Dresden

Series

TUD Physikalisches Kolloquium

Language

en

Main Topic

Physik

Other Topics

Physik

Description

Living organisms on the cellular and subcellular level represent extremely complex, fragile and constantly evolving physical microsystems. Among the least invasive approaches applicable to research of living matter on the microscopic scales are optical methods exploiting fluorescence. The possibility to selectively label a particular molecule with a fluorescent tag, and to detect its signal with high sensitivity and with virtually no background, are the main reasons of the great success of fluorescence - based techniques. One of the remaining challenges, p articularly relevant when investigating fast processes, is the limited signal from individual molecules. Fluorescence fluctuation methods can efficiently deal with weak signals by averaging over many molecules, while providing important quantitative infor mation about their dynamics and interactions, for example, diffusion coefficients, concentrations and rate constants, necessary to supplement theoretical models. New developments and applications of fluorescence fluctuation methods, including spatio - tempor al correlation and two - photon excitation, will be presented.

Last modified: Nov 1, 2011, 8:36:31 AM