Structural information on nanomolecular systems revealed by FRET

Our newly developed fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) based technique, fluorescence nanotomography (FN), is used to determine the morphology and dynamics of some soft materials and bio-molecules by attaching donor (D) fluorophores and acceptors (A) to the investigated structure and using fluorescence lifetime measurements to reveal the D-A distance distribution function rho(DA)(r). We report the effect of the limited sizes of the donor and acceptor, effect of porous polymer, and molecular structure and phase transition in phospholipid bilayers. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.