Retinol fluorescence properties

The fluorescence properties of retinol (1) and polyene alcohols (Fugate and Song, 1979 Wu et al., 1980 Das and Becker, 1980b) have been the subject of intensive study, and their importance for the analysis of retinoids has been discussed in review articles (Kahan, 1971 Ottolenghi, 1980). The well-established analytical methods for the determination of vitamin A are based on the fluorescence property of retinol (1). The fluorescence of retinol (1) at 295°K has been characterized by two main patterns the breakdown of the mirror-image relationship between absorption and emission (Thomson, 1969) and the discrepancy between the emission rate constant and the fluorescence quantum yield (Thomson, 1969). An analysis of the emitting state of retinol (1) was made on... 

That retinol and its esters emit a pale green fluorescence when excited with near-ultraviolet light has been known since the mid-1920s. Popper and his associates (1940, 1941) used the fluorescent property of retinol to identify tissues and cells containing the vitamin, and Sobotka and his colleagues (1943, 1944) devel-... 

Solutions of the retinol-RBP complex are highly fluorescent. The fluorescence properties of human RBP have been studied in detail (Peterson and Rask, 1971 Goodman and Leslie, 1972), and information is also available about the fluorescence spectral properties of RBP isolated from several other species. Retinol bound to RBP has uncorrected peak excitation and emission maxima of 334 and 463 nm, respectively. The relative fluorescence intensity of retinol bound to RBP (in aqueous solution) is an order of magnitude greater than that of retinol in solution in any one of a variety of organic solvents (Goodman and Leslie, 1972 Futterman et al., 1975). In addition, for retinol bound to RBP, the... 

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