Nonextensive kinetics of fluorescence resonance energy transfer

Some fluorescence dyes in complex media, such as those found in biology, demonstrate nonextensive kinetics, which implies representing their fluorescence decays in terms of lifetime distributions rather than simple exponentials. Complex kinetics usually discourage application to lifetime sensors, as it is believed, that additional molecular mechanisms employed for detection of an analyte will make the resulting kinetics ambiguous and the sensor response inconclusive. In this paper we investigate theoretically the applicability of complex dye kinetics as a fluorescence resonance energy transfer based lifetime sensor and demonstrate that the nonextensive nature of its kinetics does not decrease the sensing performance, and indeed even provides richer structural information than a simple exponential behavior. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.