Thermofluor (aka Differential Scanning Fluorimetry (DSF), Fluorescence Thermal Shift Assay (FTSA), or Temperature dependent Fluorescence (TdF)) provides a fluorescence readout measurement of thermally-induced protein melting.
The temperature at which a protein melts, Tm, is a measure of protein stability.
Thermoflour provides essentially the same measurement of Tm that is obtained using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).
Modern fluorescence plate imaging instrumentation allows the sensitive parallel detection of thermofluor transitions, enabling high-throughput processes for protein characterization and ligand binding that manifest themselves as changes in protein stability.
ThermoFluor was a registered trademark of 3DP. The term thermofluor subsequently passed into common usage and remains a method with broadly useful applications in drug discovery and protein biophysics.