Effects of metallic silver particles on resonance energy transfer in labeled bovine serum albumin.

Resonance energy transfer (RET) is widely used to detect proximity between biomolecules. In transparent solution the maximum donor-to-acceptor distance for RET is about 70 A. We measured the effects of metallic silver island films on RET from the intrinsic tryptophan of a protein to a bound probe as the acceptor. These preliminary experiments revealed a dramatic increase in the apparent Förster distance increasing from 28.6 to 63 A. These results suggest the use of silver island films for detecting long range proximity between biomolecules and for biotechnology applications based on RET. (c) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).