Plenary Lecture

Fluoresence Supermolecules and a Spin Cascade System as Materials for Chemical and Bioengineering Devices

Professor Gertz I. Likhtenshtein
Department of Chemistry
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Israel
E-mail: gertz@bgu.ac.il

Abstract: Over last decades scientists working in biomedicine and related areas have being faced growing requirements in novel effective analytical methods. Fluorescence, as the fast, sensitive and commonly employed technique, appears to be one of the most promising physical approaches to above mentioned problem. We proposed and developed a series of fluorescent methods for analysis and investigation of biological systems with a view of future their biotechnological and biomedical applications. Three new types of fluorescence supermolecules have been proposed and employed for such studies: 1) dual fluorophore-nitroxide compounds, 2) fluorescent-photochrome molecules and 3) super molecules containing both fluorescent and fluorescent quenching segments. The developed cascade approach, utilizing fluorescent, photochrome, triplet and spin probes, combines the advantages of each separate method, and adds a unique advantage in the study of encounters and lateral diffusion in biological membranes, over a wide range of distances and times using very sensitive regular fluorescence techniques. Unique properties of the supermolecules and the cascade system were intensively exploited as the basis of several methodologies, which include probing for investigation of biomembranes microstructure and molecular dynamics, real-time analysis antioxidants, nitric monoxide and superoxide, immunoassay in solution, quantifying the orientation and surface density of solid phase antibodies using a total internal reflection technique (TIRF). Corresponding engineering fluorescence devices have been described. Outlook for the application of supermolecules and cascade systems as materials for appropriate bioengineering devices such as fibrooptics, TIRF optical setup fluorescence imaging, fluorescence focal spectroscopy will be discussed.

Brief Biography of the Speaker: Gertz I. Likhtenshtein received his PhD and his doctor of science from the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics at the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, where he was appointed to the position of Head of Laboratory of Chemical Physics of Enzyme Catalysis in 1965, becoming a professor in 1976. In 1992 he moved to the Department of Chemistry at the Ben-Gurion University of Negev, Israel, as a full professor in charge of the Laboratory of Chemical Biophysics and has been an emeritus since 2003. He has authored ten scientific books and around 380 papers, and his many awards include the Medal of the Exhibition of Economic Achievement, the Diploma of Discovery, the USSR State Prize, the V.V. Voevodsky International Price for Chemical Physics and the Diploma of the Israel Chemical Society. Professor Likhtenshtein is a member of the International ESR Society, the American Biophysical Society, the Israel Chemical Society and the Israel ESR Society. His recent main scientific interests focus on analysis of biologically important molecules.