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Where physics meets chemistry meets biology for fundamental soft matter research.
Review
Soft Matter, 2006, 2, 361 - 370, DOI: 10.1039/b600234j
The living test-tube: imaging of real-time gene expression
Yaron Shav-Tal
Cells are dynamic entities. Not only are some cells motile but there is constant motion of organelles, proteins, nucleic acids and other molecules within every living cell. These complex molecular pathways control the life cycle of a cell and all come down to the basic players of the gene expression pathway: DNA, RNA and protein. It is therefore imperative to study biological processes as they naturally occur—in living cells, and to unravel the biophysical rules that govern intracellular dynamics. Towards this end, genetically encoded fluorescent proteins have become one of the major tools available for the study of kinetic processes taking place in real-time. This review will focus on the technical developments available for the study of gene activity in living cells and will summarize the novel biological information extracted from these approaches.
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