A study of colchicine tubulin complex by donor quenching of fluorescence energy transfer

The utility of collisional quenching of energy donors in fluorescence energy transfer is described. In multi-donor single acceptor systems, which contain different classes of donors (as distinguished by their accessibility towards a collisional quencher), donor quenching may be used to assess the fraction of energy transfer from each class of donor. The tubulin-colchicine complex was used as a donor-acceptor system to show that two inaccessible tryptophans are at or near the colchicine binding site.