Revealing Protein Dynamics by Photobleaching Techniques
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Green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) are widely used tools to visualize proteins and study their intracellular distribution. One feature of working with GFP variants, photobleaching, has recently been combined with an older technique known as fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) to study protein kinetics in vivo. During photobleaching, fluorochromes get destroyed irreversibly by repeated excitation with an intensive light source. When the photobleaching is applied to a restricted area or structure, recovery of fluorescence will be the result of active or passive diffusion from fluorescent molecules from unbleached surrounding areas. Fluorescence loss in photobleaching (FLIP) is a variant of FRAP where an area is bleached, and loss of fluorescence in surrounding areas is observed. FLIP can be used to study the dynamics of different pools of a protein or can show how a protein diffuses, or is transported through a cell or cellular structure. Here, we discuss these photobleaching fluorescent imaging techniques, illustrated with examples of these techniques applied to proteins of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae pheromone response MAPK pathway.Keywords:
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Green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) are widely used tools to visualize proteins and study their intracellular distribution. One feature of working with GFP variants, photobleaching, has recently been combined with an older technique known as fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) to study protein kinetics in vivo. During photobleaching, fluorochromes get destroyed irreversibly by repeated excitation with an intensive light source. When the photobleaching is applied to a restricted area or structure, recovery of fluorescence will be the result of active or passive diffusion from fluorescent molecules from unbleached surrounding areas. Fluorescence loss in photobleaching (FLIP) is a variant of FRAP where an area is bleached, and loss of fluorescence in surrounding areas is observed. FLIP can be used to study the dynamics of different pools of a protein or can show how a protein diffuses, or is transported through a cell or cellular structure. Here, we discuss these photobleaching fluorescent imaging techniques, illustrated with examples of these techniques applied to proteins of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae pheromone response MAPK pathway.
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Abstract The mobility of nuclear proteins can be studied by photobleaching techniques. The three main advantages of photobleaching are fast experimental turn around, good spatial and temporal resolution, and the ability to measure kinetics inside of living cells. The main disadvantage of these techniques is the requirement for fluorescently tagged proteins that have rigorously tested to ensure it has the same properties and function as its native counterpart. Three major methods of photobleaching microscopy are described: fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP), fluorescence loss in photobleaching (FLIP), and inverse fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (iFRAP). Each of these techniques has characteristics permitting the determination of distinct parameters of protein behavior in vivo.
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Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) enables characterization of quantitative dynamic properties such as diffusion coefficients of fluorescent molecules in living cells by analyzing the recovery of fluorescence intensity after photobleaching in a specific cellular compartment or area. To quantitatively determine high intracellular diffusion coefficients, a suitable optical system as well as an appropriate model for fast diffusion analysis is necessary. Here, we propose a procedure to quantify the diffusion coefficient of rapidly-diffusing fluorescent molecules that makes use of an epi-fluorescence microscope with a photobleaching laser in combination with established models for diffusion analysis. Analysis for the diffusion coefficients of tandemly oligomerized green flurescent proteins (GFPs) in living cells when changing the photobleaching times showed that photobleaching with shorter times than the diffusion speed indicated not the only way to obtain appropriate diffusion coefficients of fast-moving molecules. Our results also showed that the apparent spreading of the effective radius of the photobleached area works as a correction factor for determining appropriate diffusion coefficients of fast-moving molecules like monomeric GFPs. Our procedure provides a useful approach for quantitative measurement of diffusion coefficients in living cells. This procedure is relevant for characterizing dynamic molecular interactions, especially of fast-moving molecules, and is relevant for studies in many biological fields.
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Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy
Molecular diffusion
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Trypan blue
Rhodamine
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Abstract Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is a fluorescence microscope technique to measure molecular diffusion and transport. FRAP is a valuable technique in cell biological research and evolved conjointly with microscope and fluorescent probes advancements. Although developed in the 1970s, the discovery and further development of fluorescent proteins revolutionised FRAP. After the discovery of green fluorescence protein and its application as a noninvasive and genetically coded protein‐tag, in vivo studies of protein dynamics and interactions became possible. FRAP is based on irreversibly bleaching a pool of fluorescent probes and monitoring the recovery in fluorescence due to movement of surrounding intact probes into the bleached spot. Although measurements are straightforward, quantitative FRAP requires careful experimental design, solid controls, data collection, and analysis. Over the past years, several FRAP‐related techniques have been tailored to suit particular cell biological questions, including inverse FRAP, fluorescence loss in photobleaching, and fluorescence localisation after photobleaching. Key Concepts: Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is a method to qualitatively and quantitatively study biomolecule dynamics in living cells. FRAP is based on irreversibly bleaching a pool of fluorescent probes with high intensity light and monitoring the recovery in fluorescence due to movement of surrounding intact probes into the bleached spot. FRAP experiments are often conducted on confocal microscopes. To derive quantitative results from such experiments, several parameters and controls need to be considered and utilised in the analysis. There are several FRAP‐related methods that have been developed for specific applications and biological questions. FRAP is a versatile and popular method in modern biomedical research. Its application is broad and is increasingly applied in pharmacological, therapeutic and diagnostic areas.
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Biomolecule
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This unit describes fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) and fluorescence loss in photobleaching (FLIP) using commercially available confocal scanning laser microscopy (CSLM). Photobleaching is the photo-induced change in a fluorphore that abolishes that molecule's fluorescence. The different characteristics of green fluorescent protein (GFP) chimeras in a cell can be studied by FRAP, in which a selected region of the cell is photobleached with intense light. The movement of unbleached molecules into a photobleached region is quantified by imaging with an attenuated light source. The movement of molecules between cellular compartments can be determined by FLIP, in which the same region of a cell expressing a GFP chimera is repeatedly photobleached. The loss of fluorescence from regions outside the photobleached region is monitored to characterize the movement of a protein. Together these two techniques are providing fundamentally new insights into the kinetic properties of proteins in cells.
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