Color control of natural fluorescent proteins by photonic crystals.

The emission of fluorescent proteins inside photonic crystals is studied. It is demonstrated that the apparent emission color of the fluorescent protein can be controlled externally by the photonic crystal. With increasing crystal lattice parameter, the appearance of the proteins turns from orange to red, and suddenly to green. The dramatic color changes agree with the theoretically expected redistribution of light escaping around the stop band of the photonic crystal. Our experiments show the potential of combining biological systems with nanophotonics. This "biophotonic engineering" may be extended to control emission rates and complex Förster energy-transfer systems obtained by protein engineering.

[1]  E. Yablonovitch,et al.  Inhibited spontaneous emission in solid-state physics and electronics. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[2]  P. Vukusic,et al.  Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies , 2005, Science.

[3]  A. Mihi,et al.  Origin of light-harvesting enhancement in colloidal-photonic-crystal-based dye-sensitized solar cells. , 2005, The journal of physical chemistry. B.

[4]  S. Lukyanov,et al.  Fluorescent proteins from nonbioluminescent Anthozoa species , 1999, Nature Biotechnology.

[5]  J. Lippincott-Schwartz,et al.  Development and Use of Fluorescent Protein Markers in Living Cells , 2003, Science.

[6]  Pierre M. Petroff,et al.  Deterministic Coupling of Single Quantum Dots to Single Nanocavity Modes , 2005, Science.

[7]  A. Parker,et al.  Aphrodite's iridescence , 2001 .

[8]  K. Vahala.  Optical microcavities : Photonic technologies , 2003 .

[9]  V. Sundström,et al.  Energy transfer and trapping in photosynthesis , 1994 .

[10]  Yurii A. Vlasov,et al.  Enhancement of optical gain of semiconductors embedded in three-dimensional photonic crystals , 1997 .

[11]  R. Tsien,et al.  green fluorescent protein , 2020, Catalysis from A to Z.

[12]  A. J. Frank,et al.  Standing wave enhancement of red absorbance and photocurrent in dye-sensitized titanium dioxide photoelectrodes coupled to photonic crystals. , 2003, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[13]  Joachim Goedhart,et al.  UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Optimization of fluorescent proteins for novel quantitative multiparameter microscopy approaches , 2007 .

[14]  W. Vos,et al.  Light exiting from real photonic band gap crystals is diffuse and strongly directional. , 2003, Physical review letters.

[15]  G. Phillips,et al.  The molecular structure of green fluorescent protein , 1996, Nature Biotechnology.

[16]  R. Ranganathan,et al.  The structural basis for red fluorescence in the tetrameric GFP homolog DsRed , 2000, Nature Structural Biology.

[17]  Willem L. Vos,et al.  Quantitative analysis of directional spontaneous emission spectra from light sources in photonic crystals , 2005 .

[18]  C. López,et al.  Bragg diffraction from indium phosphide infilled fcc silica colloidal crystals , 1999 .

[19]  W. Ward,et al.  Reversible denaturation of Aequorea green-fluorescent protein: physical separation and characterization of the renatured protein. , 1982, Biochemistry.

[20]  J. Sambles,et al.  Photonic structures in biology , 2003, Nature.

[21]  Mark A Rizzo,et al.  An improved cyan fluorescent protein variant useful for FRET , 2004, Nature Biotechnology.

[22]  M. Chalfie,et al.  Green fluorescent protein as a marker for gene expression. , 1994, Science.

[23]  M. Edge,et al.  Microwave photodielectric and photoconductivity studies of commercial titanium dioxide pigments: the influence of transition metal dopants , 1998 .

[24]  X. Xie,et al.  Probing Gene Expression in Live Cells, One Protein Molecule at a Time , 2006, Science.

[25]  Willem L. Vos,et al.  Controlling the dynamics of spontaneous emission from quantum dots by photonic crystals , 2004, Nature.

[26]  Willem L. Vos,et al.  Fabrication and Characterization of Large Macroporous Photonic Crystals in Titania , 2001 .

[27]  K. Vahala.  Optical microcavities , 2003, Nature.

[28]  Single oligomer spectra probe chromophore nanoenvironments of tetrameric fluorescent proteins. , 2006, Journal of the American Chemical Society.