Here's What it Looks Like When A Gene 'Turns On'

To make proteins, cells must first read and copy the instructions written in a gene. This fundamental process entails a flurry of cellular activity and many molecular players. (Credit: Bruce Rolff/Shutterstock) In the murky darkness, blue and green blobs are dancing. Sometimes they keep decorous distances from each other, but other times they go cheek to cheek — and when that happens, other colors flare. The video, reported last year, is fuzzy and a few seconds long, but it wowed the scientists who saw it. For the first time, they were witnessing details of an early step — long unseen, just cleverly inferred — in a central event in biology: the act of turning on a gene. Those blue and green blobs were two key bits of DNA called an enhancer and a promoter (labeled to fluoresce). When they touched, a gene powered up, as revealed by bursts of red. ...