Fluorophore bleaching by regular light sources

Posted by Fredrik Wermeling on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Fluorophore-bleaching-by-regular-light-sources-tp591891.html

Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal

Hi,

A trivial question that I’ve thought about is how much fluorophore bleaching that could be attributed to working with it under regular light (light bulbs etc). Some people tend to turn off all lights as soon as they think about a fluorophore. I seldom turn off the lights and have never had a problem with it. So my question is how much bleaching the light from a regular light source can cause. I do realize that it depends on how long the exposure time is and which fluorophore we’re talking about so to make it easy lets say the time it takes to mix, add and wash the samples (not the incubation step) and the fluorophores FITC and Alexa-488.

/fredrik