MIT students report the development of an alternative to the fluorescent probe GFP.
Using GFP has a drawback they say.
(T)the protein is so bulky that it can interfere with the proteins it’s labeling, preventing them from doing their normal tasks or reaching their intended destinations.
“For a long time, people have been trying to find better ways to label proteins,” says Katharine White, an MIT graduate student in the lab of Alice Ting, associate professor of chemistry.
Ting, White and their colleagues have now come up with a new way to overcome the disadvantages of GFP, by tagging proteins with a much smaller probe. Their probe allows proteins to carry out their normal functions, offering scientists the chance to glimpse never-before-seen activity.