1. Biological Applications of Chromophores With Large Two-Photon Cross Sections
- Author
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M. E. Dickinson, T. Parker, D. McCord-Maughon, S. E. Fraser, K. Staub, M. D. Levin, and S. R. Marder
- Subjects
Materials science ,Two-photon excitation microscopy ,Chromophore ,Instrumentation ,Molecular physics - Abstract
One current limitation of two-photon technology is the lack of optimized fluorochromes for Two-Photon Laser Scanning Microscopy (TPLSM). Recently, Albota et al. (1998) have reported the design and synthesis of a number of bis(styryl)benzene derivatives that have large fluorescence quantum yields and greater two-photon absoption cross sections than any of fluorochromes that are currently used for TPLSM. As a first step in understanding how such molecules could be used in biological experiments, we have tagged a donor-πdonor molecule with biotin. We have successfully used this dye to detect quail nuclei in 2- 4 day old fixed embryos that have been reacted with QCPN, a quail specific monoclonal antibody. We have observed that this molecule gives a very intense signal, among the most intense signals we have been able to measure in our immunoassay. In particular, the brightness was about a factor of four higher than Rhodamine B-labelled streptavidin (containing 3.3 moles of dye per streptavidin tetramer).
- Published
- 1999