The shape of more colors to come.Perhaps it's fitting that green fluorescent protein "EGFP" redirects here. EGFP may also refer to the ICAO airport code for Pembrey Airport. The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a protein, comprised of 238 amino acids (26,9 kDa), from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria (GFP GFP Green Fluorescent Protein GFP Generic Framing Procedure GFP Government Furnished Property GFP Generic Frame Protocol GFP General Framing Procedure GFP Global Functional Plane GFP Global Field Power GFP Grandmothers for Peace GFP Glutton for Punishment ), the substance that lights up jellyfish jellyfish, common name for the free-swimming stage (see polyp and medusa), of certain invertebrate animals of the phylum Cnidaria (the coelenterates). The body of a jellyfish is shaped like a bell or umbrella, with a clear, jellylike material filling most of the , turns out to look just like a can of paint. When attached to other proteins, GFP acts as a biological marker, causing them to glow as if they had been dipped in bright green pigment (SN: 6/4/94, p. 358). Researchers would like to modify GFP to shine in a whole palette of colors, and knowing its shape should help. Recently, two groups have described GFP's three-dimensional crystal structure. Fan Yang and George N. Phillips Jr. of Rice University in Houston and Larry G. Moss of Tufts University School of Medicine The Tufts University School of Medicine is one of the eight schools that comprise Tufts University. Located on the university's health sciences campus in the Chinatown district of Boston, Massachusetts, the medical school has clinical affiliations with thousands of doctors and in Boston report on the protein in the October Nature Biotechnology. In the Sept. 6 Science, S. James Remington of the University of Oregon The University of Oregon is a public university located in Eugene, Oregon. The university was founded in 1876, graduating its first class two years later. The University of Oregon is one of 60 members of the Association of American Universities. in Eugene and his colleagues describe a form mutated to produce a slightly brighter light. In both structures, 11 sections of a GFP's folded amino acid chain form a cylinder that resembles the sides of a paint can; other sections form the lids. Inside sits the fluorophore, the amino acid complex that glows. So far, scientists mutating GFP have changed its color only slightly. "Knowledge of the structure will allow mutagenesis mutagenesis /mu·ta·gen·e·sis/ (mu?tah-jen´e-sis) 1. the production of change. 2. the induction of genetic mutation. mu·ta·gen·e·sis n. pl. to proceed much more efficiently," Phillips says. The structure also illuminates GFP's unusual fluorescence mechanism, says Douglas C. Youvan of KAIROS Kairos (καιρός) is an ancient Greek word meaning the "right or opportune moment". The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. Scientific in Santa Clara, Calif. At first, the protein's fluorescence "looked pretty boring," he says. But when GFP is excited by light at a wavelength of 395 nanometers, an internal proton exchange disposes of some of the energy before the rest is shed as fluorescent light. The structure indicates possible sites where that proton transfer might occur. Biologists couldn't wait to use the structure to expand their biological paint boxes-for example, by changing the amino acids in or near the fluorophore. Several groups, Phillips says, have already taken the results and are "mutating [GFP] like crazy." |
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