Pia Cosma – Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG)

A gene visualization tool to see genes in living cells with nanoscopic resolution

Understanding how our genes are organized in the cell nucleus and how they move in space and time is one of the most exciting and challenging research areas in biology. To unveil the secrets of gene behaviour it is necessary to develop tools to visualize genes in living cells.

We have recently developed “PoSTAC”, a gene visualization tool to image multiple genes at the same time with high efficiency. Using PoSTAC we could track gene movements with high temporal resolution and visualize them with super-resolution microscopy. We reached ten times greater spatial resolution than with conventional imaging methods. PoSTAC is a flexible tool that can be applied to a wide variety of cell types and genes.

These technological improvements are key to reveal how genes work in our cells and to dissect at a molecular level how genes get organized during key biological processes and in disease conditions.

Reference

Neguembor MV, Sebastian-Perez R, Aulicino F, Gomez-Garcia PA, *Cosma MP & *Lakadamyali M 2018, ‘(Po)STAC (Polycistronic SunTAg modified CRISPR) enables live-cell and fixed-cell superresolution imaging of multiple genes’, Nucleic Acids Research, 46, 5, e30. *co-corresponding authors.