GADGET WATCH | An Eternal Fluorescent Protein?
Researchers at Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Moscow who developed the fluorescent protein DsRed are tinkering with a new chromoprotein with some unique properties.1 Discovered in the sea anemone, Anemonia sulcata (at left), this GFP-like protein, called asCP, is initially nonfluorescent. When primed or "kindled" by intense green-light radiation, asCP glows red under normal excitation light. The fluorescence decays naturally with a half-life of less than 10 seconds, or users can quench the fluorescence instantly and reversibly with blue light.
Since a 10-second half-life isn't particularly practical, the team began making mutations. One interesting variant, KFP1 (kindled fluorescent protein-1), exhibits a more stable, but still reversible, kindling effect with a brief blast of high-intensity green light. More intense irradiation kindles the protein irreversibly and indefinitely. KFP1 codiscoverer, Konstantin Lukyanov, says via E-mail that kindling can be restricted to one cell, ...
