Researchers have invented a method to examine FRAP data to learn the cellular level motion. This tool will enable scientists to study how molecules move inside cells in a new perspective.
Researchers from Brown University have invented a method to examine data extracted from FRAP to examine the cells function more actively. FRAP, or Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching, is the experiment used by scientist to investigate the motion at the cellular level. Previously, FRAP data is only used to measure the molecular diffusion, the passive drift of molecules within cells.
Now, with the new method developed by the researchers from Applied Mathematics Division at Brown University, FRAP data can be used for further analysis. According to the news release from Brown University, the new mathematical modeling techniques enable scientists to extrapolate FRAP data for active analysis. This will allow scientists to study molecular motors that actively transporting the molecules.
“We know that active transport is important in many cellular systems," Veronica Ciocanel, a Ph.D. student in Brown’s Division of Applied Mathematics said. "We’ve developed a modeling technique for FRAP data that includes active transport and can quantify details about how those dynamics work.”
Ciocanel and her colleagues are able to create a validated method to estimate diffusion, rates of binding and unbinding of molecules and active transport velocities using the FRAP data. The method is able to transport and localized the mRNA molecules in Xenopus laevis oocytes. Ability to track the transport process of mRNA molecules are very important to analyze developmental polarity at the cellular level.
The model has been published in the Biophysical Journal. The new method has enhanced the usage of FRAP data for further analysis of the movement of molecules inside the cells, as the molecules never stop moving. Watch the animation of how cellular process works inside the cells below:
