ABSTRACT
Recent advances in photoluminescence-based techniques for molecular biology have allowed investigators to study fundamental biological processes in living systems with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution in real time. –e dynamic nature of biological processes in conjunction with instrumentation progress demanded that new classes of improved probes be developed to allow access to spatial and temporal scales that have largely remained undisturbed by scienti£c inquiry with conventional biochemical means [1-5]. Currently, there are several classes of photoluminescent probes available to biologists including, but not limited to, small organic dyes [5,6], genetically encoded ¬uorescent proteins [7,8], metal-ligand complexes [9,10] silver [11,12], carbon [13,14], and silicon [15] nanoparticles, and semiconductor nanocrystals [16-21], termed as quantum dots (QDs). Among these, QDs have already proven to be valuable tools in biological inquiry since their introduction to the £eld in 1998 [18,19].
