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Now, that research uses dead DNA. I'm not sure we have the tools to study DNA, untampered with and in its normal state, inside the cell. Who knows, maybe then it emits light.
Umm, not necessarily, and we do, actually. Live cell imaging? Plant cells in particular are really good for live imaging, and it's a huge area of interest to life scientists. Some examples:
http://deepgreen.stanford.edu/
live cell imaging resources list from Olympus
From 'Dead cells don't dance: insights from live-cell imaging in plants.', Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2000 Dec;3(6):532-7. Review, by S Cutler and D Ehrhardt.
"The ability to observe subcellular components in live plant cells using green fluorescent protein (GFP), reporter dyes and other technologies has enabled biologists to bypass these limitations [of having to fix & kill cells for imaging], and to gain fresh and often unexpected insights into subcellular organization and dynamics.
...
A common theme that emerges from live-cell studies is that the structure or dynamics of well-characterized organelles can be surprising when viewed in vivo. A striking example of this is illustrated by independent work from the Hawes and Staehelin research groups on Golgi dynamics. Using cis-Golgi-targeted GFP reporters (Fig. 1a), they have shown the plant Golgi apparatus to be remarkably dynamic. Plant Golgi move directionally through the cytoplasm with characteristic stop-and-start patterns. Golgi motility is closely associated with background tubular endoplasmic reticulum (ER) structures, creating the appearance of a Golgi network that moves ‘tethered’ to the ER. Depolymerization of F-actin (but not of microtubules) stops Golgi movements, implying that Golgi motility is actin-dependent. These observations contrast with those from studies of animal Golgi that appear to be relatively stationary."
Images presented in the Cutler and Ehrhardt review mostly have scale bars around 10nm. The major DNA filament (the solenoid) is 30nm diameter, so that's - umm, - 300 times smaller, and that's how DNA would appear most of the time in a cell's life, hence would only be barely visible at that scale if it really did "emit photons". But chromatin (nuclear material including DNA and the packing proteins) has highly condensed forms, e.g. during cell division, and a lot of effort has gone into imaging it.
"Fig. 2. Monooriented chromosomes are transported toward the spindle equator along kinetochore fibers of other chromosomes. (A) Two-color fluorescence image of a live PtK1 cell in which kinetochores were labeled with CENP-F/Alexa488 (red) and microtubules with tubulin/rhodamine (green). Area marked with white brackets is enlarged in (B to F). (B to F) selected frames from the two-color time-lapse recording. In each frame, CENP-F/Alexa488 fluorescence (kinetochores) is shown alone (top) and overlaid in red on microtubules (bottom). Arrows mark the kinetochore that moved toward the spindle equator. Note that trajectory of this kinetochore coincided with a prominent kinetochore fiber that extended from the spindle pole to a kinetochore on a bioriented chromosomes already positioned on the metaphase plate (arrowhead). Time in seconds. Scale bars: (A) 5 µm, (F) 2.5 µm. (G) Schematic illustrating the sequence of events presented in (B to F)."
(From Science 20 January 2006: Vol. 311. no. 5759, pp. 388 - 391, 'Chromosomes Can Congress to the Metaphase Plate Before Biorientation', T. M. Kapoor, M. A. Lampson, P. Hergert, L. Cameron, D. Cimini, E. D. Salmon, B. F. McEwen, A. Khodjakov)
35 science papers on PubMed about live plant cell imaging, some of which use intrinsic fluorescence, not even GFP mutants or introduced dyes. Although why would Barbeloids be prejudiced against mutants ?  Perhaps they 'have less qi' or are 'not really alive'?
Of course, perhaps it's only the DNA of special non-sheeple humans whose DNA emits photons, and their DNA is special and not like the DNA of all the other organisms on earth, e.g., the 'DNA activation' people with their "48 strand DNA". |
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