A fluctuating environment as a source of periodic modulation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how environmental fluctuations influence the intermittent fluorescence of a single molecule, revealing non-exponential sojourn times and linking environmental dynamics to fluorescence behavior.

Contribution

It demonstrates that fluctuating environments cause non-exponential distributions of off-times and reflect environmental dynamics in fluorescence intermittency.

Findings

Environmental fluctuations lead to non-exponential sojourn time distributions.

Fluorescence intermittency reflects underlying environmental dynamics.

Experimental results show dependence on enzymatic activity.

Abstract

We study the intermittent fluorescence of a single molecule, jumping from the "light on" to the "light off" state, as a Poisson process modulated by a fluctuating environment. We show that the quasi-periodic and quasi-deterministic environmental fluctuations make the distribution of the times of sojourn in the "light off" state depart from the exponential form, and that their succession in time mirrors environmental dynamics. As an illustration, we discuss some recent experimental results, where the environmental fluctuations depend on enzymatic activity.