{"id":83274,"date":"2018-10-04T06:42:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T13:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/fluorescent-molecule-could-shed-light-on-the-inner-workings-of-the-cellular-environment"},"modified":"2018-10-07T17:10:52","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T00:10:52","slug":"fluorescent-molecule-could-shed-light-on-the-inner-workings-of-the-cellular-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/fluorescent-molecule-could-shed-light-on-the-inner-workings-of-the-cellular-environment","title":{"rendered":"Fluorescent molecule could shed light on the inner workings of the cellular environment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/fluorescent-molecule-could-shed-light-on-the-inner-workings-of-the-cellular-environment2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A fluorescent molecule whose luminosity depends upon how fast it can rotate is helping researchers measure how viscous the fluid is inside different parts of a cell.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of interest in the biophysical field in developing <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/chemical+probes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">chemical probes<\/a> that can be used to characterize the environment inside a cell or any kind of biological compartment,\u201d says Peter Bond, from A*STAR\u2019s Bioinformatics Institute.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers from the United Kingdom and Singapore\u2014including A*STAR scientists such as Bond\u2019s team who led the computational arm of the project\u2014have modeled, developed and tested a molecule comprising two parts; a genetic probe designed to home in on particular proteins, so it can be directed to wherever in a cell that <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/protein\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">protein<\/a> is found; and a molecular rotor\u2014a fluorescent molecule whose fluorescence lasts longer, the slower it spins. A*STAR researchers simulated how this molecule would perform in different microenvironments at scales of millionths or even billionths of a meter.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018-10-fluorescent-molecule-cellular-environment.html\">https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018&#45;10-fluorescent-molecule-cellular-environment.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fluorescent molecule whose luminosity depends upon how fast it can rotate is helping researchers measure how viscous the fluid is inside different parts of a cell. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of interest in the biophysical field in developing chemical probes that can be used to characterize the environment inside a cell or any kind of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83274","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\/501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83448,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83274\/revisions\/83448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}