UW-Washington County professor emeritus Wayne Schaefer recently published his work as part of an international team on the North American walleye in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), an esteemed national scientific journal. Along with his research partners in India, Schaefer has been looking for years for the answer to an intriguing question: Why are North American Walleye, normally yellow in color, turning blue?
The team discovered Sandercyanin, the blue pigment found in the skin mucus in some walleye, has unique fluorescence properties which could absorb damaging-causing UV radiation. In other words, the "blue protein with red fluorescence" is nature's way of protecting the fish from human pollution.
Furthermore, the team discovered the protein can also be used as a biomarker to localize and monitor proteins of
interest or detect gene expression in cells, tissues, and whole
organisms.The fluorescent Sandercyanin molecules have several advantages over currently used
reporter proteins, including small size, large stoke shift, far-red
fluorescence, and long quenching time.
Read more about the technology here.