Improving the temporal resolution of a microspectrometer for the study of the photophysics of enhanced green fluorescent protein

Abstract: The use of fluorescent proteins as fluorescent markers has exploded over the last decades. In particular due to the development of advanced microscopy for live cell measurements, dynamic molecular studies down to single molecule levels and for superresolution microscopy. Many variants of fluorescent proteins exist with varying properties, such as emission color, photostability and brightness. These properties enable advanced applications, like timeresolved imaging or imaging below the diffraction limit. However, the photophysics of fluorescent proteins are complex and in many aspects quite unexplored. The triplet state in particular, is a central photophysical state because it is an entrance gate to an ensamble of deleterious photochemical processes that compromise the photostability of fluorescent proteins.The Pixel team at Institute de Biologie Structurale in France, is mainly focused on developing fluorescent proteins for advanced fluorescence imaging. One of the goals is to understand the influence of photochemistry on the properties of fluorescent proteins.In this project, a method to indirectly observe the triplet state in the prototypical EGFP fluorescent protein was developed. The introduction of new hardware and software, coupled to biophysical experiments, required an interdisciplinary strategy to tackle the obstacles during the route. Experiments under different environmental conditions to test the influence on the population of the triplet state of viscosity, pH, UV and infrared light, triplet state quenchers and temperature were performed.The results show that temperature and laser power greatly influence the triplet state kinetics in EGFP. Notably, it was found that the triplet state lifetime strongly increases at cryotemperature in comparison to roomtemperature. Overall, the newly developed setup and our preliminary results on EGFP open the door to novel studies on the photophysical properties of fluorescent proteins.