Adaptive Control of Two-Photon Excitation of Green Fluorescent Protein with Shaped Femtosecond Pulses

Abstract

For many years, it has been believed that a Fourier-transform-limited (FTL) laser pulse is the most effective light source for the generation of nonlinear phenomena, since the FTL pulse has the shortest pulse duration, that is, the highest intensity, that can be limited by the spectral width due to the principle of uncertainty. Recently, many reports have been published on the adaptive control of nonlinear phenomena with shaped femtosecond excitation laser pulses [1, 2]. Their reports have shown that the modification of the spectral and temporal phases of excitation pulses can increase or decrease the probabilities and efficiencies of such nonlinear phenomena. This method has been widely applied to studies on the active control of molecular motions or chemical reactions [3,4]. Considering further novel biological applications, we focus on the two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF) of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. GFP is spontaneously fluorescent and is relatively nontoxic compared with other organic dyes used as optical markers. Therefore, it has been widely used as a “tag” material for the fluorescence observation of living cells [5]. Two-photon excitation microscopy (TPEM) is a powerful tool for biological real-time observation due to its various advantages, such as a clear contrast, good S/N ratio, and high spatial resolution [7]. From a practical point of view, however, there is a serious problem with TPEM, which is the photobleaching of a dye. The intensity of a fluorescence signal decreases significantly during observation. One of the reasons for this is that the chromophore structure is degraded by intense excitation laser pulses that are required for efficient two-photon excitation. In this study, therefore, we attempted to determine the optimal phase for maximizing the fluorescence efficiency of a GFP variant with excitation laser pulses of minimal intensity. We considered that GFP can be an ideal dye for the investigation of the dependence of photobleaching on the phase of excitation pulses, because the GFP chromophore is located at the center of ß-can, that is, it is far from the site of reaction with activated molecular oxygen included in the solution, which can also cause photobleaching. The suppression of the photobleaching of a GFP variant in two-photon excitation is demonstrated.