Whispering-gallery-mode emission from biological luminescent protein microcavity assemblies.

Optica

Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, 65 Landsdowne St. UP-5, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

Published: February 2017

Fluorescence and bioluminescence are widely used to study biological systems from molecular to whole organism level. However, their broadband emission is often a bottleneck for sensitive spectral measurements and multiplexing. To overcome the limitation, the emitters can be coupled with optical cavity modes to generate narrowband spectral features. Here we demonstrate several types of emitter-resonator complexes made of fluorescent or bioluminescent proteins and artificially or naturally formed optical resonators. We engineered cells to express green fluorescent protein (GFP) fused with ABHD5, which binds to oil or lipid droplets supporting whispering gallery modes (WGM). The genetically-integrated complexes feature well-defined WGM spectral peaks. We measured WGM peaks from GFP-coated BaTiO beads (2.56 μm in diameter) during mitosis. Finally, we demonstrate cavity-enhanced bioluminescence using luciferase-coated beads and biochemical excitation. The ability to tailor spontaneous emission by cavity resonance inside biological systems should have applications in biological sensing, imaging and cell tagging.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5642933PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.4.000222DOI Listing

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