Photorefractive holographic contrast enhancement via increased birefringence in polymer composites containing electro-optic chromophores with different alkyl substituentsThe photodegradation properties of six electro-optic chromophores in guest-host polymer formats were measured as a function of wavelength throughout the visible and up to 1.3 m in the near infrared. The chromophore structure was varied to provide insight into its relationship with photostability.

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One current limitation of two-photon technology is the lack of optimized fluorochromes for Two-Photon Laser Scanning Microscopy (TPLSM). Recently, Albota et al. (1998) have reported the design and synthesis of a number of bis(styryl)benzene derivatives that have large fluorescence quantum yields and greater two-photon absoption cross sections than any of fluorochromes that are currently used for TPLSM. As a first step in understanding how such molecules could be used in biological experiments, we have tagged a donor-πdonor molecule with biotin. We have successfully used this dye to detect quail nuclei in 2- 4 day old fixed embryos that have been reacted with QCPN, a quail specific monoclonal antibody. We have observed that this molecule gives a very intense signal, among the most intense signals we have been able to measure in our immunoassay. In particular, the brightness was about a factor of four higher than Rhodamine B-labelled streptavidin (containing 3.3 moles of dye per streptavidin tetramer).