This is the computer generation. Modern technologies are being created and modified all the time. This is evidenced by numerous models and brands of cell phones, each competing with high tech functions that get better and sleeker each month. Computers are getting smaller yet packed with more software than ever before. Televisions are getting high-def features, and the slimmer and flatter, the better it seems. MP3 players play more than just music, but videos and movies as well.
The healthcare industry is taking advantage of these new technologies as well, as they should be, for the improvement of medical science. There are aspects of the human body are still being discovered as the advent of new technologies are being made available. Traditional equipment, for example the use of fluorescence in the tagging of biological molecules is being given a facelift. Researchers at Yale have created tiny fluorescent probes to detect and identify protein activities in the body without having to disrupt the delicate living systems.
For the purpose of demonstration, researchers use the compound trinocular microscope to describe how fluorescence works. Compound trinocular microscopes are high magnification compound microscopes that can be hooked up to an LCD screen or laptop computer via a USB cable. The reason for this is that the image can be viewed by an audience and not just the person looking into the microscope. As the researchers explain, GFP or green fluorescent protein are being used to tag proteins, but as proteins can be structurally large, the fluorescent component can be toxic to the surrounding living cells. Another disadvantage is that they commonly aggregate, thus monitoring them, even with compound trinocular microscopes or any kind of microscope for that matter, not so simple. With the new fluorescent probes, the approach of the scientists aims to study protein interactions with the body without having to disrupt normal living cells. To do this, the research team devised small molecules called profluorescent biarsenal dyes. They work by entering the cells and are of fluorescence nature when they bind with a specific amino acid or protein. These dyes have been known to be used to identify single proteins, but as the researchers found, they are quite useful in the study of protein interactions.
This kind of detection technique may provide information on how proteins work and choose their activities within the living cell. The difference of protein binding within a laboratory cultured medium varies greatly when compared to protein activities in its actual setting, within the human body. Its conformations can contribute to medical research that pertain to protein misfolding in diseases like Alzeimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease, and will able to detect malfunctions and abnormalities.
This study shows how the integration of modern technology and medical science benefits research. With the advent of more technologies specifically tailored to the research industry, we can be confident that scientists will eventually achieve breakthrough experiments that will benefit mankind in more ways than one, especially in the fields of curative and preventive measures and better prognoses of once incurable and untreatable diseases. ct