As kids it
is always fun to go out in your backyard and try to catch fireflies, but now
they are also being used to help in the medical field. There are times when
doctors need to be able to quickly identify if their patient has tumor cells in
their body, but most methods take a lot of time. So could there be a faster,
easier, and cheaper way to detect such things? The light from fireflies is that
way. The enzyme from fireflies that causes them to illuminate can now be used
as a cheap and effective detection system.
The enzyme
luciferase is what causes the fireflies to glow. A lab at EPFL figured out that
by adding a small chemical tag to the luciferase enzyme it is able to detect a
target protein. The tag originally acts as if it is a switch that is able to
block the light from illuminating. The tag continues to block the light until
the tag is able to locate the target protein. Once this happens the tag will
attach to the protein of interest and remove the block from the luciferase,
causing the luciferase to light up. When the luciferase illuminates it is
visible to the naked eye, which means it is able to eliminate the need for
expensive and complicated readout devices.
The hardest
part is designing the appropriate tag that can recognize the target protein of
interest. This method can be a very useful tool to create biosensor proteins
for many different targets.
Reference:
I am continuously amazed that so many unexpected organisms have beneficial applications within the medical field. There are multiple tests that doctors use to determine the location of tumors, and many of these tests consequently expose the patient to radiation. Using fireflies as an alternative method to locate tumor cells would reduce the amount of radiation to which the patient is exposed.
ReplyDeleteThe use of bioluminescence from the firefly is extremely interesting! Bioluminescence and fluorescence are commonly confused. In bioluminescence a chemical reaction occurs that generates the emission of light. On the other hand, fluorescence is the emission of light when energy from on photon excites an electron into a higher energy orbital. Bioluminescence is becoming increasingly popular because its' sensitivity is much greater than fluorescence.
ReplyDeleteI remember first learning about luciferase in genetics. I can't remember the exact lecture, but I do remember that the luciferase was used as a protein tag in experiments. I thought that was one of the coolest things in the world! I'm so impressed they've expanded luciferase study to cancer identification.
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