Spontaneous recovery of fluorescence by photobleached surface-adsorbed proteins

Fluorescence photobleaching of a carboxyfluorescein-labeled protein (erythrocyte cytoskeletal protein 4.1) immobilized on bare glass is found to be spontaneously reversible, provided that the sample is deoxygenated. After a short (hundredths of seconds) photobleaching laser flash, the subsequent fluorescence excited by a dim probe beam partly recovers on a long (tenths of second) time scale, even in the absence of chemical exchange or diffusion processes. Neither the fraction of the fluorescence that bleaches reversibly nor its recovery rate is a strong function of fluorophore surface concentration. At a fixed surface concentration, the reversibly photobleached fraction and its recovery rate decreases with increasing duration or intensity of the bleaching flash. On the other hand, nondeoxygenated air-equilibrated samples exhibit almost total irreversible bleaching on this time scale. Quantitative fluorescence microscopy experiments occasionally require deoxygenation to avoid photochemical crosslinking or photobleaching or to enhance the triplet state population. The observation presented here indicate that fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) experiments performed under deoxygenated conditions for measuring diffusion or chemical kinetics should be interpreted with caution: fluorescence recoveries may be due to intrinsic photochemical processes rather than fluorophore mobility. The recovery effect appears too slow to be ascribed simply to a relaxation of a triplet state; other possible explanations are offered.