{"id":243977,"date":"2026-09-12T01:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T06:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/how-one-rna-nucleotide-switch-activates-fluorescent-dyes"},"modified":"2026-09-12T01:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T06:37:12","slug":"how-one-rna-nucleotide-switch-activates-fluorescent-dyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/how-one-rna-nucleotide-switch-activates-fluorescent-dyes","title":{"rendered":"How one RNA nucleotide switch activates fluorescent dyes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-one-rna-nucleotide-switch-activates-fluorescent-dyes2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>RhoBAST is a tiny RNA molecule that activates fluorescent dyes, enabling researchers to track RNA molecules in living cells with super-resolution. An international collaboration, which includes Ronald Micura and his team from the Institute of Organic Chemistry, has now shown that a small, local \u201cnucleotide flip\u201d within the RNA controls this fluorescence activation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-01-fluorescent-rna-complexes-insights-cellular.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">Fluorescent light-up aptamers (FLAPs)<\/a> are short RNA sequences that bind and activate small dye molecules that otherwise exhibit only weak fluorescence. This enables genetic tagging of RNAs for live-cell imaging without the need for protein fusion markers. Because the dye is only \u201cswitched on\u201d upon binding to the RNA, background fluorescence remains low.<\/p>\n<p>Systems such as Spinach, Broccoli, Mango and Pepper have continuously advanced this principle over the past years. RhoBAST additionally enables high-resolution imaging of individual RNA molecules in living cells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RhoBAST is a tiny RNA molecule that activates fluorescent dyes, enabling researchers to track RNA molecules in living cells with super-resolution. An international collaboration, which includes Ronald Micura and his team from the Institute of Organic Chemistry, has now shown that a small, local \u201cnucleotide flip\u201d within the RNA controls this fluorescence activation. Fluorescent light-up [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}