What is it about?
Although the shapes of molecules of fluorescent proteins are complex, with regard to light they behave like tiny rod antennas. Molecules of fluorescent proteins absorb light of particular polarizations (but not others), and they emit light into particular directions (but not into others). We have now determined the directions from molecules of fluorescent proteins absorb light and the directions into which they emit light.
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Why is it important?
Although fluorescent proteins are widely used in biology research, most researchers consider them to be tiny glowing dots, without any directionality. Our results show that fluorescent protein molecules are highly optically directional. We believe this fact can be and should be exploited in biology research.
Perspectives
This work took many years of work, with the outcome uncertain for most of the time. It took an incredible effort to overcome all the pitfalls we encountered. Having the right optical arrangement is key, and so is making absolutely sure that the crystallographic lattices in the crystals are indeed oriented the way you think they are. Making an error in math is extremely easy. It took years for us to become confident enough in all the parts of the work that we became confident in the whole. I hope the work is now good enough to last many years and to become a foundation for many future experiments.
Josef Lazar
Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry CAS
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Directionality of light absorption and emission in representative fluorescent proteins, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2017379117.
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