New method uses fluorescence to identify disease-causing forms of proteins
Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - 11:40
in Biology & Nature
A new method uses fluorescence to detect potentially disease-causing forms of proteins as they unravel due to stress or mutations. A team of researchers from Penn State and the University of Washington reengineered a fluorescent compound and developed a method to simultaneously light up two different proteins as they misfold and aggregate inside a living cell, highlighting forms that likely play a role in several neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Two recent papers describing the method appear online in ChemBioChem and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.