Shedding Important Light — In two, new journal articles, Dr. Vladislav Verkhusha, and postdoctoral fellows Drs. Kiryl Piatkevich and Grigory Filonov, described their further development of novel technologies that use fluorescent proteins derived from bacterial phytochromes. These proteins permit visualization in the near-infrared spectrum range of light – a range at which mammalian tissues are most transparent, allowing light to penetrate deeper so that researchers can conduct deep-tissue and whole body imaging in living mammals. In the July 10, 2013 paper in Nature Communications, the Verkhusha team reported on a new, near-infrared protein that can be activated by a red light source adjacent to the skin covering the tumor, which thereby can be “turned on” in cancer cells that have been engineered to contain it. And, in the July 23, 2013 paper in Chemistry & Biology, they detailed a technology that places the halves of a fluorescent probe on two interacting proteins; during the protein-protein interactions, the probe halves join, marking the activity by fluorescing in near-infrared. These imaging advances may help researchers to better understand the roles and interactions of proteins in living animals, while providing insights into the effect of protein dysfunction in disease development. The studies correlate with a June 16, 2013 Nature Methods paper by Dr. Verkhusha, previously highlighted in Research Round-up, and with a 2011 Nature Biotechnology paper by Dr. Verkhusha. He is professor of anatomy and structural biology.
Posted on: Monday, August 19, 2013