In this work, we use evaporated gold nanoparticle films (GNPFs) as substrates for plasmon-enhanced imaging of two fluorescent proteins (FPs): mCherry and YFP. Through single-molecule epifluorescence microscopy, we show enhancement of single FP emission in the presence of GNPFs. The gold-coupled FPs demonstrate emission up to four times brighter and seven times longer lived, yielding order-of-magnitude enhancements in total photons detected. Ultimately, this results in increased localization accuracies for single-molecule imaging. Furthermore, we introduce preliminary results for enhancement of mCherry-labeled TcpP membrane proteins inside live Vibrio cholerae cells coupled to GNPFs. Our work indicates that plasmonic substrates are uniquely advantageous for super-resolution imaging and that plasmon-enhanced imaging is a promising technique for improving live cell single-molecule microscopy.

Date Published: 21 February 2013
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 8597, Plasmonics in Biology and Medicine X, 85970J (21 February 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2002062

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8597:
Plasmonics in Biology and Medicine X
Tuan Vo-Dinh; Joseph R. Lakowicz, Editor(s)