Competition Between Energy Transfer and Deactivation During Quenching of Tryptophan Fluorescence of Albumin by Dye Molecules

Using quenching of Trp fluorescence by different dyes, bound to bovine serum albumin, it is shown that the spectral overlap between emission and absorption spectra does not necessarily lead to energy transfer as the sole quenching mechanism. A correlation of the limiting quenching value with the Förster overlap integral was not observed. The energy transfer efficiency was less than the quenching efficiency because of competitive radiationless deactivation processes induced by dye binding.