Green Fluorescent Protein: Difference between revisions

'''Green fluorescent protein (GFP)''' is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescent bioluminescent] polypeptide consisting of 238 residues isolated from the body of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aequorea_victoria ''Aequorea victoria''] jellyfish.<ref name="PDBsum">[http://www.ebi.ac.uk/thornton-srv/databases/cgi-bin/pdbsum/GetPage.pl?pdbcode=1ema&template=main.html], Protein Database (PDBsum): 1ema.  European Bioinformatics (EBI); 2009.</ref> GFP converts the blue chemiluminescent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aequorin aequorin] in the jellyfish into green fluorescent light.<ref name="Yang">[http://www-bioc.rice.edu/Bioch/Phillips/Papers/gfpbio.html], Yang F, Moss LG, Phillips GN Jr.  1996.  The molecular structure of green fluorescent protein.  Biotechnology.  14: 1246-1251.  DOI 10.1038/nbt1096-1246.</ref> In remains unclear why these jellyfish use fluorescence, why green is better than blue, or why they produce a separate protein for green fluorescence as opposed to simply mutating the present aequorin to shift its wavelength,<ref name="Tsien" /> but in the laboratory, GFP can be incorporated into a variety of biological systems in order to function as a marker protein. Since its discovery in 1962, GFP has become a significant contributor to the research of monitoring gene expression, localization, mobility, traffic, interactions between various membrane and cytoplasmic proteins, as well as many others.<ref name="Haldar">[http://www.springerlink.com/content/wvg513864266g77n/fulltext.pdf], Haldar S, Chattopadhyay A.  2009.  The green journey.  J Fluoresc.  19:1-2.  DOI 10.1007/s10895-008-0455-6.</ref>