ABSTRACT
Two-photon microscopy together with fluorescent proteins and fluorescent protein-based biosensors are commonly used tools in neuroscience. To enhance their experimental scope, it is important to optimize fluorescent proteins for two-photon excitation. Directed evolution of fluorescent proteins under one-photon excitation is common, but many one-photon properties do not correlate with two-photon properties. A simple system for expressing fluorescent protein mutants is E. coli colonies on an agar plate. The small focal volume of two-photon excitation makes creating a high throughput screen in this system a challenge for a conventional point-scanning approach. We present an instrument and accompanying software that solves this challenge by selectively scanning each colony based on a colony map captured under one-photon excitation. This instrument, called the GIZMO, can measure the two-photon excited fluorescence of 10,000 E. coli colonies in 7 hours. We show that the GIZMO can be used to evolve a fluorescent protein under two-photon excitation.
ABSTRACT
The P(11) line of the ν1 + ν3 combination band of C2H2 was studied using an extended cavity diode laser locked to a frequency comb. Line shapes were measured for acetylene and nitrogen gas mixtures at a series of temperatures between 125 and 296 K and total pressures up to 1 atm. The data were fit to two speed-dependent line shape models and the results were compared. Line shape parameters were determined by simultaneously fitting data for all temperatures and pressures in a single multispectrum analysis. Earlier pure acetylene measurements [Cich et al. Appl. Phys. B 2012, 109, 373-38] were incorporated to account for self-perturbation. The resulting parameters reproduce the observed line shapes for the acetylene-nitrogen system over the range of temperatures and pressures studied with average root-mean-square observed-calculated errors of individual line measurement fits of approximately 0.01% of maximum transmission, close to the experimental signal-to-noise ratios. Errors in the pressure measurements constitute the major systematic errors in these measurements, and a statistical method is developed to quantify their effects on the line shape parameters for the present system.
ABSTRACT
Selected isolated rotational transitions in the 1-0 band of the red A(2)Π-X (2)Σ(+) system in CN have been recorded with transient frequency modulation spectroscopy as a function of argon pressure up to 0.2 atm at room temperature. Line shapes were fit using Fourier transforms of a parametrized time correlation function, including Doppler and velocity-dependent collisional broadening, and collisional shifts. Deviations from Voigt line shapes can be equally well fit by modeling the narrowing with a speed-dependent collision model or with a velocity-changing collisional narrowing model. Pressure broadening coefficients were observed with little rotational state dependence, in the range of 0.070-0.075 cm(-1) atm(-1). In contrast, stronger and qualitatively different rotational state dependences are observed for both pressure-dependent blue shift coefficients and the narrowing parameters. No asymmetry in the pressure broadened lines was observed.
