Nature & Environment
The Secrets Behind a Marine Animal's Bright Green Fluorescent Glow
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Jul 02, 2014 08:59 AM EDT
Marine creatures can light of the seas, glowing with fluorescence in the dark. Now, scientists have taken a closer look at this ability and have managed to decipher the structural components related to fluorescence brightness, revealing how animals manage to glow.
In this case, the researchers looked at lancelets, marine invertebrates that are also known as "amphioxus." These fish-shaped creatures spend most of their time in shallow coastal regions burrowed beneath the sand. These creatures can emit both very bright and much dimmer versions of green fluorescent proteins (GFPs), a rare capability in the animal kingdom.
The researchers examined the structural differences between the proteins with the two levels of light output. More specifically, the scientists found that only a few key structural differences at the nanoscale allows the sea creature to emit different brightness levels, and that the differences relate to changes in stiffness around the animals' "chromophore pocket." This area of proteins is responsible for molecular transformation of light.
"We discovered that some of the amphioxus GFPs are able to transform blue light into green light with 100 percent efficiency (current engineered GFPs-traditionally rooted in the Cnidarian phylum-only reach 60 to 80 percent efficiency), which combines with other properties of light absorbance to make the amphioxus GFPs about five times brighter than current commercially available GFPs, resulting in effect to a huge difference," said Dimitri Deheyn, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It is also interesting that the same animal will also express similar GFPs with an efficiency of about 1,000 times less."
That said, the exact mechanism that controls the ability during light transformation is unknown. But this latest study does pave the way for future research in that regard. It reveals that different GFPs seem to have different functions within the same individual.
The findings could have implications for a variety of industries looking to maximize the brightness of natural fluorescence. More specifically, it could have uses for biotechnology, such as adapting fluorescence for biomedical protein tracers and for tracking the expression of specific genes in the human body.
The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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First Posted: Jul 02, 2014 08:59 AM EDT
Marine creatures can light of the seas, glowing with fluorescence in the dark. Now, scientists have taken a closer look at this ability and have managed to decipher the structural components related to fluorescence brightness, revealing how animals manage to glow.
In this case, the researchers looked at lancelets, marine invertebrates that are also known as "amphioxus." These fish-shaped creatures spend most of their time in shallow coastal regions burrowed beneath the sand. These creatures can emit both very bright and much dimmer versions of green fluorescent proteins (GFPs), a rare capability in the animal kingdom.
The researchers examined the structural differences between the proteins with the two levels of light output. More specifically, the scientists found that only a few key structural differences at the nanoscale allows the sea creature to emit different brightness levels, and that the differences relate to changes in stiffness around the animals' "chromophore pocket." This area of proteins is responsible for molecular transformation of light.
"We discovered that some of the amphioxus GFPs are able to transform blue light into green light with 100 percent efficiency (current engineered GFPs-traditionally rooted in the Cnidarian phylum-only reach 60 to 80 percent efficiency), which combines with other properties of light absorbance to make the amphioxus GFPs about five times brighter than current commercially available GFPs, resulting in effect to a huge difference," said Dimitri Deheyn, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It is also interesting that the same animal will also express similar GFPs with an efficiency of about 1,000 times less."
That said, the exact mechanism that controls the ability during light transformation is unknown. But this latest study does pave the way for future research in that regard. It reveals that different GFPs seem to have different functions within the same individual.
The findings could have implications for a variety of industries looking to maximize the brightness of natural fluorescence. More specifically, it could have uses for biotechnology, such as adapting fluorescence for biomedical protein tracers and for tracking the expression of specific genes in the human body.
The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone