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Biophotonics

The slow fade of cell fluorescence

Nature Photonics volume 6, pages 641–643 (2012)Cite this article

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The short flash of a femtosecond laser induces a complex physiological response in mammalian cells that manifests as a slow bleaching of fluorescence from green fluorescent protein.

The understanding of various dynamic processes in living systems — from simple bacterial or eukaryotic cells to complex multicellular organisms such as mice — was revolutionized by the introduction of green fluorescent protein1 (GFP) as a fluorescent label for cells. Indeed, its importance was publically recognized in 2008 with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry being awarded for its discovery and development. GFP is a protein from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria that becomes fluorescent without help from other proteins or cofactors except molecular oxygen, which is normally present in the aerobic organisms. This is in contrast to other natural pigments, in which light-absorbing molecules are formed by multistep pathways that are catalysed by several enzymes.

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Figure 1: Scheme of intracellular events resulting in GFP bleaching after short treatment with a near-infrared femtosecond laser.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Konstantin A. Lukyanov and Vsevolod V. Belousov are at the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Miklukho-Maklaya 16/10, 117997 Moscow, Russia,

    Konstantin A. Lukyanov & Vsevolod V. Belousov

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  1. Konstantin A. Lukyanov
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  2. Vsevolod V. Belousov
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Correspondence to Konstantin A. Lukyanov.

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Lukyanov, K., Belousov, V. The slow fade of cell fluorescence. Nature Photon 6, 641–643 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.240

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.240

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