CHEM 451 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Fluorophore, Protein Structure, Photon
Document Summary
Fluoresence is a widely used tool to understand protein structure/ function. 2 fluorophores , excite one fluorophore (donor) and detect emission from both donor and acceptor fluorophores. Mechanism of energy transfer is dipole dipole interaction between donor and acceptor -> distance dependent due to dipole dipole interaction that generates a field that decays with some probability of distance. Excitation and emission spectra of donor and acceptor pair shown. Distance is the most important thing to understand paper 6, the way you quantify the extent to which the fluorophores are transferring energy is the fret efficiency (distance dependent) Donor acceptor energy transfer by dipole dipole, not by redox. Efficiency of energy transfer determined by : distance between donor and acceptor, spectral overlap of donor emission & acceptor absorption spectrum, rel orientation of donor emission dipole and acceptor absorption dipole. Large changes in fret efficiency when small changes in distance. Small changes in distance -> large changes in fret efficiency.
