BACKGROUND The development of collections of quantitatively characterized standard biological parts should facilitate the engineering of increasingly complex and novel biological systems. The existing enzymatic and fluorescent reporters that are used to characterize biological part functions exhibit strengths and limitations. Combining both enzymatic and fluorescence activities within a single ...

Marine phytoplankton account for about 50% of all global net primary productivity (NPP). Active fluorometry, mainly Fast Repetition Rate fluorometry (FRRf), has been advocated as means of providing high resolution estimates of NPP. However, not measuring CO2-fixation directly, FRRf instead provides photosynthetic quantum efficiency estimates from which electron transfer rates (ETR) and ultimate...

Under exceptional circumstances, light and molecules bond together, creating new hybrid light–matter states with far-reaching consequences for these strongly coupled entities. The present article describes the quantum-mechanical foundation of strong-coupling experimental evidence molding radiation properties nanoprobes by strong-coupling. When applied to tracing marking, fluorometry technique p...

We describe a fluorometric procedure, with use of fluorescamine, for determining plasma amino nitrogen in a 10-mul sample of deproteinized plasma. Values for apparently healthy human subjects agree well with those obtained by spectrophotometry. The simplicity and speed of the assay recommends it as a screening procedure for detecting aminoacidopathies.

Myofibril-bound creatine kinase EC 2.7.3.2 (CK), a key enzyme of muscle energy metabolism, has been selected for studies of conformational changes that underlie the cellular control of enzyme activity. For fluorescence spectroscopy measurements, the CK molecule was double-labeled with IAF (5-iodoacetamidofluorescein) and ErITC (erythrosin 5'-isothiocyanate). Measurement of fluorescence resonanc...

A simple direct fluorometric method for rapid identification of group A streptococci is described. The method permits the detection of the organism in mixed cultures without the aid of a microscope and is amenable to automated processing of specimens. Experience with the indirect fluorometric method revealed that nontrypsinized cells from a 10-fold dilution of overnight broth cultures could be ...

Fast repetition rate (FRR) fluorometry is an optical technique for estimating photosynthetic properties of phytoplankton from measurements of variable fluorescence yield. I determined the minimum error in such estimates contributed by inherent instrument biases, improper measurement protocols, and the type of optimization algorithm used to infer photosynthetic variability from changes in variab...

The editorial by Diamandis [1] in Janu-ary discussed a report by Walker et al. [2], who used strand displacement amplification and fluorescence polarization (FP) to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The editorial placed particular emphasis on the homogeneous format of the assay. However, this aspect deserves to be expanded by an outline of the significance and evolution of combining DNA ampli-...