Self-Quenching Behavior of a Fluorescent Probe Incorporated within Lipid Membranes Explored Using Electrophoresis and Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy

Fluorescent probes are useful in biophysics research to assess the spatial distribution, mobility, and interactions of biomolecules. However, fluorophores can undergo “self-quenching” of their fluorescence intensity at high concentrations. A greater understanding of concentration-quenching effects is important for avoiding artifacts in fluorescence images and relevant to energy transfer processes in photosynthesis. Here, we show that an electrophoresis technique can be used to control the migration of charged fluorophores associated with supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) and that quenching effects can be quantified with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). Confined SLBs containing controlled quantities of lipid-linked Texas Red (TR) fluorophores were generated within 100 × 100 μm corral regions on glass substrates. Application of an electric field in-plane with the lipid bilayer induced the migration of negatively charged TR-lipid molecules toward the positive electrode and created a lateral concentration gradient across each corral. The self-quenching of TR was directly observed in FLIM images as a correlation of high concentrations of fluorophores to reductions in their fluorescence lifetime. By varying the initial concentration of TR fluorophores incorporated into the SLBs from 0.3% to 0.8% (mol/mol), the maximum concentration of fluorophores reached during electrophoresis could be modulated from 2% up to 7% (mol/mol), leading to the reduction of fluorescence lifetime down to 30% and quenching of the fluorescence intensity down to 10% of their original levels. As part of this work, we demonstrated a method for converting fluorescence intensity profiles into molecular concentration profiles by correcting for quenching effects. The calculated concentration profiles have a good fit to an exponential growth function, suggesting that TR-lipids can diffuse freely even at high concentrations. Overall, these findings prove that electrophoresis is effective at producing microscale concentration gradients of a molecule-of-interest and that FLIM is an excellent approach to interrogate dynamic changes to molecular interactions via their photophysical state.