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Red light, green light: flickering fluorophores reveal biochemistry in cells

A mysterious afterglow in a pandemic side project leads to a new method for observing proteins that interact in living cells.
  1. Alla Katsnelson

    1. Alla Katsnelson is a science writer based in Southampton, Massachusetts.

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Close-up on the objective lenses of a fluorescence microscope

A molecular-tracking technique called PAPA-fSMT uses fluorescent tags to study protein complexes in the cell.Credit: Getty

Living cells teem with proteins. But those proteins rarely work alone; they drive cellular behaviour by pairing up with other proteins to form transient or long-lasting complexes. “Most proteins in the cell are not monogamous, so to speak,” says Thomas Graham, a biophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02964-8

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 18 September 2024: An earlier version of this technology feature should have identified Xavier Darzacq as a laboratory co-head with Robert Tjian.

References

  1. Graham, T. G. W., Ferrie, J. J., Dailey, G. M., Tjian, R. & Darzacq, X. eLife 11, e76870 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Graham, T. G. W. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.06.25.600644 (2024).

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