TY  - GEN
KW  - photon-antibunching stiochiometry
ID  - heidok10561
AV  - public
Y1  - 2010///
TI  - A Novel Method for Quantitative and Structural Determination of Molecular Complexes by Photon Antibunching
N2  - In optical microscopy fluorescent molecules are used to label target structures like proteins or DNA.With confocal microscopy, a complex of multiple fluorescent molecules is detected as a point spread function due to the diffraction limit. A particular challenge is to determine the number of molecules hiding behind the point spread function. In this work an extended method for determining the number of fluorescent molecules is presented. The method is based on photon antibunching, which is the phenomenon that a single fluorescent molecule can emit only one photon at a time. A statistical analysis of coincidently detected photons can be used to determine the number of photon emitters. In previous works the maximal number of molecules that can be distinguished was about 3. This has now been extended by doubling the number of detectors from 2 to 4, so that up to 4 simultaneously emitted photons can be detected. A new data analysis procedure was established according to the changes of the scheme. Simulations have shown that in theory up to 50 molecules can be resolved under realistic conditions. These predictions were experimentally validated with immobilized dsDNA labeled with 5 fluorophores. The consideration of photobleaching in the data analysis and the use of a photo-stabilizer enable up to 15 molecules to be determined. Thus, this method provides a promising tool for determining the stoichiometry of various biomolecular complex, which can not be achieved by normal microscopic methods.
A1  - Ta, Haisen
UR  - https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/10561/
ER  -