
Revolutionary New Tool Tags Proteins in Live Cells Without Disturbance!
2025-05-05
Author: Wei Ling
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have unveiled an astonishing breakthrough in live-cell protein tagging, transforming the landscape of cellular biology. This cutting-edge technique allows scientists to incorporate amino acids and chemical labels into proteins of live mammalian cells swiftly and with minimal disruption.
Understanding how proteins operate within their cellular environment is paramount for unlocking biological functions. Traditionally, fluorescent proteins and epitope sequences have been used as genetic tags to track protein behavior. However, larger tags can disrupt protein interactions and localization, while smaller molecular labels, though less invasive, pose challenges in live-cell applications.
Existing methods often lack the necessary timing precision and fail to capture the dynamic activities of proteins during cellular signaling and adaptation. There’s been a pressing need for a technique that facilitates rapid, precise, and minimally invasive tagging in a native context.