Structural Control of Dual Emission in Coumarin Fluorophores for Visualizing Protein Droplet Maturation
Tomoya Yamamoto, Yusei Otsuka, Asuka Mori, Yuichiro Hori, Yuma Yamamoto, Motonari Uesugi, Kazuya Kikuchi · 2026
Read Structural Control of Dual Emission in Coumarin Fluorophores for Visualizing Protein Droplet Maturation by Tomoya Yamamoto, Yusei Otsuka, Asuka Mori, Yuichiro Hori, Yuma Yamamoto, Motonari Uesugi, Kazuya Kikuchi (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13480580.txt.
Description
Tomoya Yamamoto and co-authors describe a 2026 glow probe that watches protein droplets harden inside cells. Proteins often gather into liquid droplets that slowly stiffen into fibres tied to disease, yet the standard check bleaches one droplet at a time. The team built coumarin dyes that shine in two colours at once, with a twisted shape set by a five-atom ring that carries varied atoms.
Swapping ring atoms tuned both the two-colour balance and brightness. Glued to a test protein, the dye reported droplet stiffening as a colour ratio that microscopes could read across many droplets at once. A light-tag trick then let the team compare droplet interiors inside living cells. Screening drugs that slow fibre growth gains a faster, parallel readout from the probe.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Tomoya Yamamoto, Yusei Otsuka, Asuka Mori, Yuichiro Hori, Yuma Yamamoto, Motonari Uesugi, Kazuya Kikuchi |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 39420 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |