Protein fluorescence decay: discrete components or distribution of lifetimes? Really no way out of the dilemma?

A new methodology of fluorescence decay analysis by iterative reconvolution is presented. It is based on the recent finding that the statistics of single-photon time-correlated data are best described by a compound Poisson law and requires the recording of a sample of at least 20 decays. Application of multivariate statistical methods to the analysis of the recovered decay parameters results in improved accuracy and better estimation of the uncertainties of mono- and multiexponential decays. If it is, of course, not possible to distinguish unambiguously between discrete components and a continuous distribution of lifetimes, it is, however, possible to determine a higher limit of the width of such a distribution should it be present. With our methodology, the presence of a distribution of lifetimes with a width of approximately 20% of its center value inevitably leads to a failure in the deconvolution procedure, a fact of crucial importance in protein conformational studies, for example.