CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); }P.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }P.cjk { font-family: "DejaVu Sans"; font-size: 12pt; }P.ctl { font-family: "Lohit Hindi"; font-size: 12pt; }A:link { color: rgb(0, 0, 255); } Single molecule fluorescence detection has found many applications in materials science and biology since its first report in 1990. It offers unique possibilities because of its ultimate detection limit, the ability to detect and follow in time single events, and the access to the distribution of behaviors versus the average value of conventional bulk detection methods. At the same time, it attains a time resolution in the milliseconds range and a spatial resolution of hundreds of nanometers, in conventional detection, and tens of nanometers in super resolution techniques. More recently, metallic nanoparticles (MNP) have been extensively used to enhance the performance of molecular fluorescence in bulk and single molecule applications. The interaction between MNP and fluorophores opens new perspectives in fluorescence microscopy, based on the interaction of the plasmonic band of the nanostructure and the molecular electronic states. These interactions allow to detect low intrinsic fluorescent molecules, by an enhancement in emission brightness, and they also provide an increase in the total number of emitted photons and in the monitoring time before photo bleaching. In the last six years our laboratory has been performing research in single molecule techniques, including the use of gold NP (AuNP). In this lecture I will illustrate experiments in fluorescence microscopy using AuNP to detect low emission quantum yield molecules, to increase the monitoring time in cellular environments, to provide protection against photobleaching, and to enhance the performance of a fluorescent photochromic system in super resolution localization.