UC Davis Biological Sciences Newsletter - Winter 1998
Fluorescent yellow-orange tag lights up life inside the cellStudies of plant and animal development were revolutionized by the recent development of green and blue fluorescent markers that allow researchers to actually observe the movements of important features within living cells. Now UC Davis scientists have devised another fluorescent marker--a glowing yellow-orange hue that can be used in tandem with the blues and greens.Professor J. Clark Lagarias of Molecular and Cellular Biology built the new marker with student John Murphy, now a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, from a plant light receptor and a pigment from red algae. Lagarias says the yellow-orange label overcomes some shortcomings of the blue and green markers: Its light is brighter and its color is less likely to be confused with a cell's inherent fluorescence, which makes it visible at greater depths within living tissue. And this new marker, dubbed "phytofluor," may be used along with the blue and green tags, making it possible to study the actions--and interactions--of differently tagged molecules at the same time. Lagarias suggests that phytofluors could be used to track the effects of new drugs, or tagged onto proteins to study normal cellular function and disease. A report on the work was published in the November 1997 issue of Current Biology.
UC Davis Biological Sciences Newsletter - Winter 1998 |