Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy measurements on amyloid fibril reveal at least two binding modes for fluorescent sensors

Abstract

Interaction of fluorophore with amyloid structure is central to the design and development of fluorescent sensors. In literature ensemble spectroscopy results reveal at least two distinct binding modes for most of the torsional probes like Thioflavin-T, SYPRO Orange, etc. though single molecule localization microscopy and spectroscopy results consider only one binding mode. To address this discrepancy we employed fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) to measure the binding kinetics on immobilized fibril structures with single molecule sensitivity. Our results indicate that there are at least two possible biding configurations with differing relaxation time constants indicating possible weaker and stronger binding configurations depending on the local environment on the fibril structure. Critical evaluation of on-time distributions from the recorded wide-field image stack for single molecule localization microscopy image, further highlight the presence of two burst times. Such bi-modal binding behavior is attributed to the differing binding configurations on fibril architecture.