What can green algae do for science if they weren’t, well,
green?
That’s the question biologists at UC San Diego sought to
answer when they engineered a green alga used commonly in laboratories,
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, into a rainbow of different colors by producing six
different colored fluorescent proteins in the algae cells.
While fluorescent green, red, blue and yellow may be all the
rage this year for running shoes and other kinds of sporting gear, fluorescent
algae hasn’t been a style trend yet in scientific laboratories. But in
announcing their achievement in the current issue of The Plant Journal, the UC
San Diego biologists said tagging algae with different kinds of fluorescent
proteins would provide an important laboratory tool for algae researchers. It
could be used to sort different kinds of cells, allow scientists to view
cellular structures like the cytoskeleton and flagella, or even to create “fusion
proteins,” allowing scientists to follow a protein around the cell.