M47 - FLIM - Picoquant Fluorescent Lifetime Imaging Microscope

FLIM measures the total fluorescence lifetime of fluorophores (as in, how long on average a fluorophore stays in its excited state following excitation from a short excitation light pulse). This can give you a wealth of information on the fluorophore’s local chemical and physical environment (“local” meaning nanometer scale!). It can also be used to study translational and rotational behaviour of the fluorophores and their relative orientations as well as orientational dynamics (thereby allowing an estimation of the respective properties of the attached molecules). It also allows highly accurate FRET imaging, eliminating the crosstalk and/or bleaching problems inherent to standard ratiometric FRET imaging, and it provides an elegant tool for (time-resolved) anisotropy measurements

FLIM approach allows high accuracy FRET imaging, eliminating the crosstalk and/or bleaching problems inherent to standard ratiometric FRET imaging.

This microscope, although officially belonging to CSF, can be used by IMP-IMBA-GMI users as any other system of the BioOptics facility, without any extra costs. The system is situated in VBC6, room E32A.