Wood Aaron, Mathai Cherian J, Gangopadhyay Keshab, Grant Sheila, Gangopadhyay Shubhra
Bioengineering Department, University of Missouri, 254 Agricultural Engineering, 65211-5200 Columbia, Missouri, United States.
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Missouri, 201 Naka Hall, 65211-5200 Columbia, Missouri, United States.
ACS Omega. 2017 May 12;2(5):2041-2045. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.7b00104. eCollection 2017 May 31.
The ability to image single molecules (SM) has been the dream of scientists for centuries, and because of the substantial recent advances in microscopy, individual fluorescent molecules can now be observed on a regular basis. However, the development of such imaging systems was not without dilemmas, such as the detection and separation of individual fluorescence emissions. One method to solve this problem utilized surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to enhance the emission intensity of SMs. Although enhancing the SM emission intensity has yielded promising results, this method does not fully utilize the unique plasmonic properties that could vastly improve the SM imaging capabilities. Here, we use SPR excitation as well as surface plasmon-coupled emission from a high-definition digital versatile disc grating structure to image and identify different fluorophores using the angular emission of individual molecules. Our results have important implications for research in multiplexed SM spectroscopy and SM fluorescence imaging.
几个世纪以来，对单分子（SM）进行成像一直是科学家们的梦想。由于显微镜技术最近取得了重大进展，现在可以定期观察单个荧光分子。然而，此类成像系统的开发并非没有难题，比如单个荧光发射的检测和分离。解决这个问题的一种方法是利用表面等离子体共振（SPR）来增强单分子的发射强度。尽管增强单分子发射强度已取得了令人鼓舞的结果，但这种方法并未充分利用那些能够极大提高单分子成像能力的独特等离子体特性。在这里，我们利用SPR激发以及来自高清数字多功能光盘光栅结构的表面等离子体耦合发射，通过单个分子的角发射来成像和识别不同的荧光团。我们的结果对多重重单分子光谱学和单分子荧光成像研究具有重要意义。
