How fluorescent RNA gets its glow

摘要

Green fluorescent protein is widely used as a visualization marker for biological molecules, and has revolutionized microscopic imaging in biological systems - a fact celebrated by the award of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Engineered fluorescent RNAs are potentially equally useful, and a green fluorescent RNA motif called Spinach has been developed for this purpose. Uncovering the structural basis for how fluorescent RNAs work is crucial to realizing their full potential as experimental tools. Two sets of crystal structures of Spinach - one reported by Huang et al. in Nature Chemical Biology, and the other by Warner et al. in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology - now provide a deeper understanding of how it fluoresces, and should enable the design of improved labels for visualizing individual RNA molecules in cells.