Photoluminescent transition metal complexes present desirable properties such as red emission, large Stokes shifts, and long-lived excited state photoluminescence decays. The aforementioned properties are of general interest in the manufacture of probes for a variety of applications. Our research group uses long-lived photoluminescent metal complexes in combination with time-resolved techniques to address challenges that permeate conventional fluorescent probes. For example, we will be show how time-gating can be effectively employed to enhance the performance of photoluminescent probes for detecting specific DNA sequences, even in the presence of autofluorescence. Then, long-lived iridium complexes will be used in combination time-gating to illustrate how amino acids such as cysteine and histidine can be detected in complex autofluorescent environments. Other time resolved techniques will be employed to demonstrate how free amino acids such as histidine can be distinguished and quantified in the environments possessing histidine-containing biomolecules.

Photoluminescent metal complexes as probes for biologically relevant molecules

248th National Meeting (2014)

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