Guys with Geigers
Jan. 30th, 2012 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillWere walking around the lab today. Why, you might ask?
Because we work with radioactives. There are little stickers all over the cabinets with the radiolabelled chemicals that go 'danger! radiation!' Which we generally totally ignore in favor of using said chemicals.
Why the chemicals? Well, since the advent of gene cloning and bacterial expression, it has become quite easy to make genes that result in a protein followed by a short linker followed by another protein. This doesn't happen in nature, but it is useful in studies because one of the proteins can be green fluorescent protein (GFP), which comes from jellyfish originally and glows in the dark. This makes it very easy to see where it, and therefore the linked protein, is.
The disadvantage to this is that GFP is big. If you were trying to use it to track a small molecule, it would be a lot like strapping a jet engine to a mouse. Is the mouse going to behave as normal under these circumstances?
So for small molecules, we add radioactive hydrogen or carbon atoms. These behave exactly as usual, except that they are radioactive and thus easily trackable. The kind of radiation they emit is almost strong enough to make it through a sheet of paper; skin stops it cold. Still, we regularly have safety inspections by the Geiger guys to check that we don't accidentally have more dangerous rads. Which is good.
Science!
Because we work with radioactives. There are little stickers all over the cabinets with the radiolabelled chemicals that go 'danger! radiation!' Which we generally totally ignore in favor of using said chemicals.
Why the chemicals? Well, since the advent of gene cloning and bacterial expression, it has become quite easy to make genes that result in a protein followed by a short linker followed by another protein. This doesn't happen in nature, but it is useful in studies because one of the proteins can be green fluorescent protein (GFP), which comes from jellyfish originally and glows in the dark. This makes it very easy to see where it, and therefore the linked protein, is.
The disadvantage to this is that GFP is big. If you were trying to use it to track a small molecule, it would be a lot like strapping a jet engine to a mouse. Is the mouse going to behave as normal under these circumstances?
So for small molecules, we add radioactive hydrogen or carbon atoms. These behave exactly as usual, except that they are radioactive and thus easily trackable. The kind of radiation they emit is almost strong enough to make it through a sheet of paper; skin stops it cold. Still, we regularly have safety inspections by the Geiger guys to check that we don't accidentally have more dangerous rads. Which is good.
Science!
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Date: 2012-01-31 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-01 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-01 04:37 am (UTC)