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Binding can now be quantified in live cells, but the accuracy of such measurements remains uncertain. To address this uncertainty, we compare fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) measurements of the binding kinetics of a transcription factor, the glucocorticoid receptor, in the nuclei of live cells. We find that the binding residence time measured by FRAP is 15 times longer than that obtained by FCS. We show that this discrepancy is not likely due to the significant differences in concentrations typically used for FRAP and FCS, nor is it likely due to spatial heterogeneity of the nucleus, improper calibration of the FCS focal volume, or the intentional FRAP photobleach. Instead, our data indicate that photobleaching of bound molecules in FCS is mainly responsible. When this effect is minimized, FRAP and FCS measurements nearly agree, although cross-validation by other approaches is now required to rule out mutual errors. Our results demonstrate the necessity of a photobleach correction for FCS measurements of GFP-tagged molecules that are bound for 0.25 s, and represent an important step forward in establishing a gold standard for in vivo binding measurements.

Measurement of live-cell binding interactions is vital for understanding the biochemical reactions that drive cellular processes. Here, we develop, characterize, and apply a new procedure to extract information about binding to an immobile substrate from fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) autocorrelation data. We show that existing methods for analyzing such data by two-component diffusion fits can produce inaccurate estimates of diffusion constants and bound fractions, or even fail altogether to fit FCS binding data. By analyzing live-cell FCS measurements, we show that our new model can satisfactorily account for the binding interactions introduced by attaching a DNA binding domain to the dimerization domain derived from a site-specific transcription factor (the vitellogenin binding protein (VBP)). We find that our FCS estimates are quantitatively consistent with our fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) measurements on the same VBP domains. However, due to the fast binding interactions introduced by the DNA binding domain, FCS generates independent estimates for the diffusion constant (6.7 ± 2.4 μm2/s) and the association (2 ± 1.2 s−1) and dissociation (19 ± 7 s−1) rates, whereas FRAP produces only a single, but a consistent, estimate, the effective-diffusion constant (4.4 ± 1.4 μm2/s), which depends on all three parameters. We apply this new FCS method to evaluate the efficacy of a potential anticancer drug that inhibits DNA binding of VBP in vitro and find that in vivo the drug inhibits DNA binding in only a subset of cells. In sum, we provide a straightforward approach to directly measure binding rates from FCS data.

In this study, we demonstrate how the diffusion of probe particles in aqueous poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) solutions and gels is affected by: (i) the presence of cross‐links, (ii) the cross‐link density, (iii) the polymer concentration. We apply fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) to measure the diffusion time of a rhodamine‐based fluorescent particle (TAMRA) and TAMRA‐labeled dextran in PVA solutions and gels prepared at various polymer concentrations (1% to 8.6% w/v) and cross‐link densities (1/400 to 1/50 cross‐link monomers per PVA monomers). The measurements indicate that the probe particles are slowed down with increasing polymer concentration and with increasing cross‐link density. Also, FCS can detect differences in the diffusion times measured in “fresh” and “aged” PVA solutions. We find that FCS provides a quantitative measure of network inhomogeneities.