A novel method of fluorescent labeling of proteins in living cells using short α-helices
Researchers from the Laboratory of Biophotonics and the Group of molecular tags for optical nanoscopy, IBCH RAS, together with foreign colleagues developed a novel method of fluorescent labeling of proteins in living cells using short α-helices (so-called K/E-coils), which tend to interact with each other. The small size of the labels (only 2-3 kDa) should decrease the impact on the native dynamics of studied proteins. In comparison to popular covalent labels, K/E-coils can increase the resistance of labeling to photobleaching by an order of magnitude due to the continuous exchange of probes. In addition, this method makes it possible to observe the target proteins almost immediately after their synthesis without the need to wait for the long-term maturation of fluorescent proteins. This work was supported by the RSF grant 16-14-10364. Results are published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences.
january 27, 2020