Green fluorescent RNA

摘要

The future for intracellular imaging looks bright with the development of fluorescent probes made entirely of RNA. The cunning design exploits structural attributes of RNA to detect a variety of small molecules. Green fluorescent protein (GFP) has proven tremendously useful as a method of creating intense visible fluorescence by entirely molecular biological steps. Generally the gene encoding GFP is fused with a gene of interest so that the resultant protein is tagged with the fluorescent module. Itcan then be followed in real time by optical imaging, to decipher spatio-temporal information on gene expression or protein localization within living cells or tissues. Such information is crucial for understanding complex cellular processes that dependon when, where and how much of a protein is present. The challenge now is to devise similar methods to reveal other molecules involved in cellular functions, such as small-molecule messengers, drugs, metabolites and short functional RNAs. Stojanovic andKolpashchikov, writing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, report a considerable advance in this area with the development of RNA-based probes that can detect small organic molecules by fluorescence.