Modern Medical Laboratory Journal

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a protein in the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria that exhibits green fluorescence when exposed to light. The protein has 238 amino acids, three of them (Numbers 65 to 67) form a structure that emits visible green fluorescent light. In the jellyfish, GFP interacts with another protein, called aequorin, which emits blue light when added with calcium. Biologists use GFP to study cells in embryos and fetuses during developmental processes.
Biologists use GFP as a marker protein. GFP can attach to and mark another protein with fluorescence, enabling scientists to see the presence of the particular protein in an organic structure. GFP refers to the gene that produces green fluorescent protein. Using DNA recombinant technology, scientists combine the GFP gene to another gene that produces a protein that they want to study, and then they insert the complex into a cell. If the cell produces the green fluorescence, scientists infer that the cell expresses the target gene as well. Moreover, scientists use GFP to label specific organelles, cells, tissues. As the GFP gene is heritable, the descendants of labeled entities also exhibit green fluorescence.
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