Tag Archives: fluorescent tag

Apr 20 2012

ladies, here’s something you may not know about yourself

Being the kind of person I am, I can’t describe the joy of setting off on a journey with absolutely everything I need. Nothing forgotten, nothing to grab along the way.  Oh the peace of mind.

Ladies, we know that you come into this world equally well prepared.  That is, for your journey towards motherhood.  Or do you? We’ve all been aware that you’re born with all the eggs you’ll ever have, but is that true?  Researchers in the lab of Dr. Jonathan Tilly at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston challenge that notion by reporting their discovery of human egg-producing stem cells in Nature Medicine this past February. Continue reading →

Jan 4 2012

new ‘living’ lights for all of your future holiday needs

Image taken from Phillip and Samayoa, et. al. 2011

In the spirit of the bright lights and big ideas of the new year, I thought I would share a pretty cool story of ingenious genetic engineering published a few weeks ago in Nature.

A team led by Arthur Prindle and Phillip Samayoa in the lab of Jeff Hasty at UC San Diego has created a network to make bacteria synchronously glow like so many twinkling Christmas lights. (Image shows a still photo of one of these chips.) Continue reading →

May 13 2011

re-tooled virus to shed a little light on cancer

Herpes Simplex Virus

Cancer, viruses and….more fluorescence.  Yeah, oh my is right.  Probably didn’t think a combination of cancer and viruses could be a good thing huh?  This is the beauty of my line of work – this is one of those news pieces I found that just made me say, “Wow, that’s cool.”  And really brilliant.  But rather than continuing to bury the lead, let’s get right to business.

Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, led by Dr. Timothy P. Cripe have recently published work in which they created a genetically engineered herpes simplex virus designed to specifically target tumor cells and force them to secrete a signal into the blood to alert doctors to their presence.  This work appears in the May 11 issue of PLoS One. Continue reading →

Apr 22 2011

peptides…you light up my life.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is Friday.  Need I say more?  In the spirit of the glorious end of the week, I don’t want to bog you down in too much technicality.  Rather, I found a really cool story I wanted to share that I think is pretty easy to digest.

Scientists seemingly have figured out a way to make surgery hip – by making certain tissues glow in bright fluorescent colors.  Thus, they stand in stark contrast from other, unlabeled tissues and are easily distinguishable. This has promise in being truly beneficial to help surgeons from cutting the wrong tissues, such as nerves, or making sure they cut all the correct tissue…like a tumor.

How, you ask?  We turn to the jellyfish. Continue reading →