Self-assembling proteins can store cellular "memories"

Biological systems such as organs contain many different kinds of cells, all of which have distinctive functions. One way to study these functions is to image proteins, RNA, or other molecules inside the cells, which provide hints to what the cells are doing. However, most methods for doing this offer only a glimpse of a single moment in time, or don’t work well with very large populations of cells. Study appears in Nature Biotechnology.

As cells perform their everyday functions, they turn on a variety of genes and cellular pathways. MIT engineers have now coaxed cells to inscribe the history of these events in a long protein chain that can be imaged using a light microscope.

The researchers designed a genetically encoded system in which one of these subunits is continuously produced inside cells, while the other is generated only when a specific event occurs. Each subunit also contains a very short peptide called an epitope tag. Each of these tags can bind to a different fluorescent antibody, making it easy to visualize the tags later on and determine the sequence of the protein subunits.

So the researchers concluded that this technique could help shed light on the steps that underlie processes such as memory formation, response to drug treatment, and gene expression.

Reference:

Self-assembling proteins can store cellular “memories”; Nature Biotechnology; DOI: 10.1038/s41587-022-01586-7.