Resonance energy transfer and its applications

En se propageant dans l espace, cette cause active que nous nommons lumiere, aneantit, pour ainsi dire, les distances, agrandit la sphere que nous habitons, nous montre des etres dont nous rfaurions jamais soup onne 1 existence, et nous revele des proprietes dont le sens de la vue pouvait seul nous donner la notion. 

Encyclopedic Methodique. Physique Monge, Cassini, Bertholon et al., 1819 

The mechanisms of resonance energy transfer (RET) between a donor and an acceptor have been described in Section 4.6.3. The aim of this chapter is to present further aspects of RET and its applications for probing matter or living systems. RET is particularly widely used to determine distances in biomolecules and supra-molecular associations and assemblies. 

Because this chapter will be mainly concerned with the Forster mechanism of transfer, the results of the Forster theory, given in Section 4.6.3, are recalled here for convenience. The rate constant for transfer between a donor and an acceptor at 

The sixth power dependence explains why resonance energy transfer is most sensitive to the donor-acceptor distance when this distance is comparable to the Forster critical radius. 

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Clapp AR et al (2007) Two-Photon excitation of quantum-dot-based fluorescence resonance energy transfer and its applications. Adv Mater 19 1921-1926... 

Chapter 9 is devoted to resonance energy transfer and its applications in the cases of donor-acceptor pairs, assemblies of donor and acceptor, and assemblies of like fluorophores. In particular, the use of resonance energy transfer as a spectroscopic ruler , i.e. for the estimation of distances and distance distributions, is presented. 

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