Pulsed-Interleaved-Excitation Two-Dimensional Fluorescence Lifetime Correlation Spectroscopy

We report on pulsed-interleaved-excitation two-dimensional fluorescence lifetime correlation spectroscopy (PIE 2D FLCS) to study biomolecular structural dynamics with high sensitivity and high time resolution using Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET). PIE 2D FLCS is an extension of 2D FLCS, which is a unique single-molecule fluorescence method that uses fluorescence lifetime information to distinguish different fluorescence species in equilibrium and resolves their interconversion dynamics with a submicrosecond time resolution. Because 2D FLCS has used only a single-color excitation so far, it was difficult to distinguish a very low-FRET (or zero-FRET) species from only donor-labeled species. We overcome this difficulty by implementing the PIE scheme (i.e., alternate excitation of the donor and acceptor dyes using two temporally interleaved excitations with different colors) to 2D FLCS, realizing two-color excitation and two-color fluorescence detection in 2D FLCS. After proof-of-principle PIE 2D FLCS analysis on the photon data synthesized with Monte Carlo simulation, we apply PIE 2D FLCS to a DNA-hairpin sample and show that this method readily distinguishes four fluorescent species, i.e., high-FRET, low-FRET, and two single-dye-labeled species. In addition, we show that PIE 2D FLCS can also quantitatively evaluate the contributions of the donor-acceptor spectral crosstalk, which often appears as artifacts in FRET studies and degrades the information obtained.