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Infographic: Enzymes Controlled by Light

Custom-designed kinases have built-in switches that act as gatekeepers for the enzymes' active sites.

Written byRuth Williams
| 1 min read

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© GEORGE RETSECK

Researchers have designed kinases that can be inactivated and activated by light. In violet light, engineered green fluorescent domains (called pdDronpa) dimerize, glow, and block the enzyme’s active site (top). In blue light, the domains break into monomers, lose their fluorescence, and uncage the kinase’s active site (bottom).

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Meet the Author

  • ruth williams

    Ruth is a freelance journalist. Before freelancing, Ruth was a news editor for the Journal of Cell Biology in New York and an assistant editor for Nature Reviews Neuroscience in London. Prior to that, she was a bona fide pipette-wielding, test tube–shaking, lab coat–shirking research scientist. She has a PhD in genetics from King’s College London, and was a postdoc in stem cell biology at Imperial College London. Today she lives and writes in Connecticut.

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