Fluorescent markers and no background imaging of different types of RNA in animal cells.

A cover image from the November issue of Nature-Biotechnology, which shows the use of fluorescent RNA to quantify the translation of mRNAs in a single cell.
recently, Professor Yang Qi and Zhu Linyong of the National Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering of East China University of Technology have made breakthroughs in the field of fluorescent RNA and live cell RNA imaging after 7 years of collaborative research.
their original series of high-performance fluorescent RNAs, the first international lysating and backgroundless imaging of different types of RNA in animal cells. On November 5,
, the results were published in the form of a cover paper, Nature-Biotechnology.
so far, naturally occurring fluorescent RNA has not been found in nature, and scientists have tried to synthesize a few fluorescent RNAs, which have low performance and difficulty in practicality.
in response to this technical challenge, Yang Qi, Zhu Linyong and others obtained a series of highlighted, stable, low background fluorescent RNA for the first time through new molecular design and molecular co-oriented evolutionary ideas.
these fluorescent RNA are compact and strongly fluorescent when combined with innovative dye molecules, with different colors such as blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, and is named Pepper because of its appearance as colorful peppers.
they can be inserted into different RNA molecular sequences by gene editing, enabling fluorescent markers and real-time, hyper-resolution imaging of these molecules in living cells without affecting their normal activities such as transcription, positioning, translation, degradation, etc.
because fluorescent RNA markers are reversible, their color within cells can be changed at will, and this flexibility is beneficial for the construction of fluorescent markers to stabilize cell lines and genetically modified animals.
compared with existing technology, the fluorescent RNA in affinity, stability, signal-to-noise ratio, fluorescent brightness of living cells and other aspects of the increase of one to three orders of magnitude, reflecting the fluorescent RNA from concept to practical breakthrough, for living cells RNA functional research provides a valuable tool.
Source: China Science Daily.