Single Green Fluorescent Protein-expressing cell is basis of living laser device
Sunday, June 12, 2011 - 12:00
in Physics & Chemistry
It sounds like something out of a comic book or a science fiction movie a living laser but that is exactly what two investigators at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed. In a report that will appear in the journal Nature Photonics and is receiving advance online release, Wellman researchers Malte Gather, PhD, and Seok Hyun Yun, PhD, describe how a single cell genetically engineered to express green fluorescent protein (GFP) can be used to amplify the light particles called photons into nanosecond-long pulses of laser light.