Notice: Users may be experiencing issues with displaying some pages on stanfordhealthcare.org. We are working closely with our technical teams to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.
 

Learn about the flu shot, COVID-19 vaccine, and our masking policy »

Stanford Health Care

A drug-controllable tag for visualizing newly synthesized proteins in cells and whole animals PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Lin, M. Z., Glenn, J. S., Tsien, R. Y. 2008; 105 (22): 7744-7749

Abstract

Research on basic cellular processes involving local production or delivery of proteins, such as activity-dependent synaptic modification in neurons, would benefit greatly from a robust, nontoxic method to visualize selectively newly synthesized copies of proteins of interest within cells, tissues, or animals. We report a technique for covalent labeling of newly synthesized proteins of interest based on drug-dependent preservation of epitope tags. Epitope tags are removed from proteins of interest immediately after translation by the activity of a sequence-specific protease until the time a protease inhibitor is added, after which newly synthesized protein copies retain their tags. This method, which we call TimeSTAMP for time-specific tagging for the age measurement of proteins, allows sensitive and nonperturbative visualization and quantification of newly synthesized proteins of interest with exceptionally tight temporal control. We demonstrate applications of TimeSTAMP in retrospectively identifying growing synapses in cultured neurons and in visualizing the distribution of recently synthesized proteins in intact fly brains.

View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.0803060105

View details for Web of Science ID 000256648600023

View details for PubMedID 18511556

View details for PubMedCentralID PMC2402386