If you do nothing else today, set up a Google Profile. It takes maybe five minutes. Google Scholar uses the information in your profile, comprised of all the papers you’ve published, and all the papers that have referenced your papers, to figure out the papers you don’t want to miss. It’s a brilliant time saver! Then each week, while you are sleeping, it sends you a list of links to the papers you will probably reference in your next manuscript. Like this truly wonderful review we found this week: “Multiplex visualization of dynamic signaling networks using genetically encoded fluorescent biosensors“. Jin Zhang and her team explain with wonderful clarity and insight what we can now begin to grasp about cell signaling networks using multiple single fluorophore biosensors.
Using spectrally distinct, single fluorophore sensors it is now finally possible to monitor simultaneous events within living cells. For example, Richard Tsien and Yulong Li co-expressed a red fluorescent synaptophysin and GCamp3, a green fluorescent calcium sensor to study simultaneous pre and post synaptic behaviors in neurons. Monitoring simultaneous events in living cells works well for studying GPCR cell signaling networks too. Genetically encoded, single-fluorophore calcium and diacylglycerol sensors expressed simultaneously in living cells produce far better signals than FRET sensors and are robust enough for both live cell imaging and cell-based plate reader assays. When it comes to monitoring cell signaling networks in living cells, there really is no need to FRET.
