TIME-RESOLVED FLUORESCENCE OF PROTEINS AND MODEL SYSTEMS

摘要

The history of protein luminescence is more than a century old. Konev, in a review of results from the nineteenth century, cites the observations by Stokes of the fluorescence of horns and nails, by Regnault and Sechenov of the fluorescence of the crystalline lens and skin, and by Soret of the violet fluorescence of myosin. Numerous other examples of this phenomenon were described by many different investigators during the period between the late 1920s to the early 1950s. In general, there is no clear distinction in most of these reports whether the observed luminescence was due to phosphorescence or to fluorescence. It appears, on one hand, that because of the time delay between excitation and detection, some workers were detecting phosphorescence. On the other hand, it is possible that in fact others were observing the low-energy tail of tryptophan fluorescence, which extends into the range of visible wavelengths above 400 nm.