Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching materials

Fluorescence microphotolysis, or photobleaching, has been widely used to study translational mobility of lipids and proteins in membranes. An attenuated laser beam may be focused down to the diameter of a cell or less. Then the intensity can be suddenly increased by several orders of magnitude, bleaching any fluorescent material present. The return of fluorescent material by free diffusion from a neighboring region (fluorescence recovery after photobleaching) or by diffusion through a membrane into a cell can then be... 

The FRAP (fluorescence recovery after photobleaching) technique uses photobleaching to measure molecular diffusion and can be used if the material in question is confined to a specific plane (e.g., a membrane or cytoskeletal filaments adsorbed on a surface). The fluorophores... 

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