During the past 20 years, there has been a remarkable growth in the use of fluorescence in the biological sciences. There is a continuing development of methods based on the fluorescence properties of biological molecules intrinsically fluorescent or labelled by extrinsic fluorophores. This success is mainly due to the sensitivity of fluorescence detection and the area of applications is wide, from in vitro studies (enzymatic assays, interactions and dynamics of macromolecules) to the cellular imaging (tracking of DNA/proteins, biological relevant interactions in the cell context). Interestingly, the sensitivity of detection makes it possible to access to information related to a single molecule or to a single molecular event, i.e. not only at the ensemble level. All these studies are strongly coupled to the development and characterization of new fluorescent probes with suitable photophysic and fluorescent properties.

The Biophotonics and Molecular Interactions team has a long-standing expertise in the study of biological molecules and molecular interactions using timeresolved fluorescence methodologies and in the use of femtosecond lasers. In the past, fluorescence anisotropy (FA) and, more recently, Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) and Fluorescence Cross-Correlation Spectroscopy (FCCS), were extensively used in our group for quantitatively studying protein-DNA or protein-protein interactions as well as hydrodynamics properties of macromolecules, on different viral and cellular enzymatic systems using nucleic acids as a substrate (HIV integrase, helicases, DNA repair enzymes).

Eric Deprez (research director CNRS), team leader

Patrick Tauc (research director, CNRS)
Olivier Delelis (researcher, CNRS)
Clémence Richetta (MC ENS)
Bertrand Cinquin (research ingineer, CNRS)
Hervé Leh (research ingineer, CNRS)
Frédéric Subra (research ingineer, CNRS)
Marie-Christine Bouger (technician, CNRS)
Françoise Simon (technician, ENS)
Aimeric Cabrie (Post-doc)