Dual Illumination Enhances Transformation of an Engineered Green‐to‐Red Photoconvertible Fluorescent Protein

The molecular mechanisms for the photoconversion of fluorescent proteins remain elusive owing to the challenges of monitoring chromophore structural dynamics during the light‐induced processes. We implemented time‐resolved electronic and stimulated Raman spectroscopies to reveal two hidden species of an engineered ancestral GFP‐like protein LEA, involving semi‐trapped protonated and trapped deprotonated chromophores en route to photoconversion in pH 7.9 buffer. A new dual‐illumination approach was examined, using 400 and 505 nm light simultaneously to achieve faster conversion and higher color contrast. Substitution of UV irradiation with visible light benefits bioimaging, while the spectral benchmark of a trapped chromophore with characteristic ring twisting and bridge‐H bending motions enables rational design of functional proteins. With the improved H‐bonding network and structural motions, the photoexcited chromophore could increase the photoswitching‐aided photoconversion while reducing trapped species.     

Saturation Effects and the Colored Pump Noise in a Dye Laser

We investigate the statistical properties of two single-mode dye-laser models-the colored-loss-noise model and the colored-gain-noise model. Analytic expressions of the probability,the mean and the variance of the steady-state laser intensity are obtained through the unified expansion theory [Phys. Rev. A43 (1991) 700]. By comparison we find that when the cavity decay rate for the electric field is large and the pump parameter a₀ is small, the differences of the results of the two laser models are small. Otherwise, the differences are large. And the correlation time of the noise has very obvious influence on the results of the two models.