Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching techniques to measure translational mobility in microscopic samples

The scope of photobleaching applications and the method itself are briefly reviewed. Two current applications in this laboratory are then outlined. First, the use of spatial Fourier transforms to analyze video photobleaching measurements is presented. This method extracts diffusion coefficients using all the image data and it does not require that the initial condition created by photobleaching be known. Second, the use of genetic engineering methods coupled with photobleaching analysis is discussed as means to uncover the structural determinants of membrane protein lateral mobility.