Versatile Multiwavelength Fluorometer

The introduction in recent years of a multitude of new fluorescent dyes to measure cellular and subhas lead to an increasing demand for high performance fluorometers. Fluorometers currently availablecommunity often have limited wavelength selection, slow response, poor spectral purity, large backgrquite expensive. Many of these limitations are due to the use of monochromators to select photon wavaim is to develop a fluorometer that eliminates the expense and limitations of monochromators, and pcommunity with an instrument that is considerably more versatile and considerably less expensive. Phspecific aims: 1) to prototype a digitally controlled fluorometer with low noise characteristics, muand emission modes, high spectral purity, and 2 ms data acquisition rate. This prototype will also elimitations of monochromators. 2) to facilitate design simplicity and reduce expense by incorporatinthe computer interface and data acquisition onto a single resident PC card. The lower cost of this sversatile fluorometer will make the technology available to many researchers in this rapidly developthe application of fluorescent techniques and our understanding of subcellular processes.