On the wobbling-in-cone analysis of fluorescence anisotropy decay

Interpretation of fluorescence anisotropy decay for the case of restricted rotational diffusion often requires a model. To investigate the extent of model dependence, two models are compared: a strict cone model, in which a fluorescent probe wobbles uniformly within a cone, and a Gaussian model, where the stationary distribution of the probe orientation is of a Gaussian type. For the same experimental anisotropy decay, analysis by the Gaussian model predicts a smaller value for the rate of wobbling motion than the strict cone analysis, but the difference is 35% at most; the cone angle obtained by the strict cone analysis agrees closely with the effective width of the Gaussian distribution. The results suggest that, when only two parameters (the rate and the angular range) are extracted from an experiment, the choice of a model is not crucial as long as the model contains the essential feature, e.g., the more-or-less conical restriction, of the motion under study. Model-independent analyses are also discussed