2012 Volume 10 Pages 121-127
We study experimentally the dependence of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) efficiency on the distance between donors and acceptors that are embedded in a supported lipid bilayer. The FRET efficiencies are determined by comparing the donor fluorescence intensities before and after acceptor photobleaching. The obtained data are compared with a theory that considers multiple donors and multiple acceptors existing in a two-dimensional field. We achieve good qualitative agreement in terms of the relationship between the FRET efficiency and the donor-to-acceptor distances. The Förster radius is also estimated from the comparison, which shows good quantitative agreement. The significance of the present demonstration is in showing that acceptor photobleaching experiments can quantitatively evaluate the FRET phenomenon, which indicates that the supported lipid bilayer behaves as an ideal two-dimensional fluidic system for embedded molecules. [DOI: 10.1380/ejssnt.2012.121]
