Beyond the sequence - reading epigenetic informtion with photons

RNA-polymerase is a molecular machine that bindes to specific DNA sequences marking the begining of genes. After binding, it satrts synthesizing RNA according to the genetic code in DNA in a process called gene expression. This image shows several genomes of the virus T7 that were stretched on glass and labeled with a fluorescent dye (Blue lines). The colored spots along the DNA are fluorescent quantum dots that were designed to target the T7-RNA polymerase, allowing us to find their binding position along the genome. Different binding proteins can be targeted by quantum-dots with differnt fluorescent color in order to distinguish between them and understand the relationships between their binding events.Click here for a little feature article about some of the work I've been doing to optically map RNA polymerase on the genome of the T7 virus