{"id":2105,"date":"2014-06-22T13:18:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T18:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2105"},"modified":"2014-06-23T11:21:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-23T16:21:38","slug":"glowing-proteins-could-help-brain-imaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/glowing-proteins-could-help-brain-imaging\/","title":{"rendered":"Glowing proteins could help brain imaging<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2076\" style=\"width: 348px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/QuasAr.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2076\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2076\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/QuasAr.jpg\" alt=\"Newly engineered proteins called QuasArs emit red light when there is a change in the electrical charge across the cell membrane. The proteins could one day help researchers directly measure brain activity in living animals. (Image credit: Yongxin Zhao)\" width=\"338\" height=\"264\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/QuasAr.jpg 338w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/QuasAr-300x234.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 338px) 100vw, 338px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2076\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Newly engineered proteins called QuasArs emit red light when there is a change in the electrical charge across the cell membrane. The proteins could one day help researchers directly measure brain activity in living animals. (Image credit: Yongxin Zhao)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Scientists have developed a new protein capable of glowing red in response to electrical signals in neurons, a tool which could become a boon to brain researchers.\u00a0The technology could one day be used to produce mice or fish with \u2018glowing brains\u2019 that could greatly improve the ability of neuroscientists to understand mental processes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The proteins come from bacteria-like organisms called archaea, in which they work to turn sunlight into chemical energy; however they also have the unexpected property of lighting up in response to electrical changes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The scientists used artificial selection over many generations to evolve brighter and brighter proteins, and successfully transferred the best ones into mammalian cells.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nmeth\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/full\/nmeth.3000.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span>Original research paper<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the\u00a0<em>Nature Methods<span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/em>on\u00a0<strong>June\u00a022, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><a style=\"color: #1155cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.chemistry.ualberta.ca\/FacultyandStaff\/Faculty\/RobertCampbell.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Campbell<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">, University of Alberta, Alberta<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have developed a new protein capable of glowing red in response to electrical signals in neurons, a tool which could become a boon to brain researchers.\u00a0The technology could one day be used to produce mice or fish with \u2018glowing brains\u2019 that could greatly improve the ability of neuroscientists to understand mental processes. The proteins [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2076,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[180,113,909,51,53,200],"class_list":["post-2105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-alberta","tag-biology","tag-genetics","tag-health","tag-medicine","tag-neurology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/QuasAr.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-xX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2108,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions\/2108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}