Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences - Bioorganic Synthesis

 

 

Why is it interesting?

To understand RNA-regulated processes in a cell it is important to know how synthesis, transport and storage of particular RNA molecules are orchestrated in a spatio-temporal manner. It would also be very useful to identify and sort certain cell types based on their RNA expression. This information can be obtained by means of fluorogenic hybridization probes that sequence-selectively stain the RNA molecules of interest.

 

What are we doing?

Currently, the existing state-of-the-art hybridization probes (including our previous probes) are limited to abundant RNA targets. Often the fluorescence microscopy images are not informative because i) the amount of probes delivered to cells (e.g. by microporation, transfection or reversible membrane permeation) is not sufficient to provide contrast behind background of a cell’s autofluorescence or ii) too many probes remain unbound.

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RNA Imaging_Teaser 2

Our contributions:

We developed a new class of probe molecules, the Forced Intercalation (FIT)-probes, which contain a fluorophor of the thiazole orange family. These probes bind specifically to target mRNA in living cells and report hybridization by fluorescence enhancement.

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