Living Colors — Dr. Robert Singer and colleagues have developed a new technique for simultaneously monitoring the expression of two genes inside living cells. In research published in the February 2013 issue of Nature Methods, the scientists were able to count the number of mRNA molecules transcribed by two different alleles of a yeast gene by attaching differently-colored fluorescent proteins to each, or “tagging” them. The labeling effort in this study, combining one well-established tag, MS2, and one new tag, PP7, revealed that a population of identical cells exhibits variation in gene expression levels. This phenomenon may be evolutionarily advantageous and may also help explain why genetically identical twins often exhibit slight differences. The publication presents a methodology that will have countless uses in the field of RNA biology. First author, Sami Hocine is a Ph.D. student in the lab of Dr. Singer, who is professor and co-chair of anatomy & structural biology, professor of neuroscience and of cell biology and co-director of the Gruss-Lipper Biophotonics Center. Dr. Jeffrey Chao and Dr. Daniel Zenklusen, former postdoctoral research associates in anatomy & structural biology, contributed to the research.
Posted on: Friday, January 25, 2013