Living Cells Reveal Activities of Single Gene

Using an analysis technique that relies on fluorescent proteins to tag items of interest within a cell, experts were recently able to peer inside a living cell, and observe the actions of a single gene.

This has never been done before in a living organism, and the tremendous achievement will open the way for a large number of new studies to be carried out on the exact functions of each single gene.

Understanding which of our genes underlies which process is an essential part of making sense of the factors that lead to the development of diseases, or which cause genetic maladies that can be passed on to the next generations.

The new study was carried out by experts at the Yeshiva University Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECM). Details of the work were published today, April 22, in an online issue of the top journal Science.

Experts explain in detail how they were able to follow a critical process called gene transcription in real-time, by using the fluorescent protein approach. Transcription is the process through which DNA data stored into a gene is converted into messenger RNA (mRNA).

This molecule in turn plays a critical role in the creation of the protein for which the gene that created it codes. Proteins are arguably the most important molecules in the human body, as they also include a vast subclass called enzyme. The latter are catalysts for the majority of chemical reactions in the body.

This investigation was primarily led by AECM Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center co-director Robert Singer, PhD. He holds an appointment as a professor and co-chair of anatomy and structural biology at the Yeshiva University.

The Science paper was authored by National Cancer Institute (NCI) investigator Daniel Larson, PhD, who also worked in Singer's lab in th past. He is also the head of the NCI Systems Biology of Gene Expression Section.

“The view of transcription in yeast that emerges from this study is that its initiation seems to be a random event that depends on the success of transcription factors searching through the yeast nucleus looking for a particular gene’s promoter region,” Singer explains.

“By contrast, once initiation occurs, RNA polymerase recruits individual nucleotides for the growing mRNA molecule in an efficient and predictable manner.” he goes on to say.

“Understanding how gene expression is regulated in a single-celled organism such as yeast is a first step in understanding the same processes in humans, which have a vastly larger and more complex genome,” Larson adds.

“But fundamentally, the same molecular laws governing transcription factors will still apply,” he concludes, quoted by Science Blog.