Living Cell Emits Laser Light

Who would have thought that a living cell could emit laser light? Scientists Malte C. Gather and Seok-Hyun Yun of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital thought so and thus inserted the genetic material needed to express green fluorescent protein (GFP) into a living cell from a human embryonic kidney.

GFP, which was first isolated from jellyfish, has been found to be vital in biomedical imaging. The glowing protein has been used as visual marker in tracking gene expression in living organisms. Thus, the latest study will create more opportunities to advance biophotonic application that use the intensity and information-carrying capacity of laser light, but this is yet to be proven after many years of further investigation.

At present, the scientists are satisfied that they were able to realize their vision of making such device. "It actually came from pure intellectual curiosity," Yun says. "From the very beginning we had a vision to make it work inside a cell."

Read the original article at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=biological-laser-cell.