In general, de novo solid tumors are composed of phenotypically and functionally heterogeneous malignant cells. This heterogeneity interferes with the effectiveness of targeted molecular cancer therapies. Even if most of the tumor is killed by a targeted treatment, recurrences are common and can be lethal. In this study, a mixed tumor model, which is predominantly a population of epidermal grow...

BACKGROUND Pigs are an optimal animal for conducting biomedical research because of their anatomical and physiological resemblance to humans. In contrast to the abundant resources available in the study of mice, few fluorescent protein-harboring porcine models are available for preclinical studies. In this paper, we report the successful generation and characterization of a transgenic DsRed-Mon...

In this study, we report the development of a new dual reporter vector system for the analysis of promoter activity. This system employs green fluorescence emitting protein, EGFP, as a reporter, and uses red fluorescence emitting protein, DsRed, as a transfection control in a single vector. The expression of those two proteins can be readily detected via flow cytometry in a single analysis, wit...

Identifying metastatic tumor growth at an early stage has been one of the biggest challenges in the treatment of lung cancer. By genetic lineage tracing approach in a conditional model of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) in mice, we demonstrate that cystic lesions represent an early stage of metastatic invasion. We generated a mouse model for NSCLC which incorporated a heritable DsRed fluores...

UNLABELLED The proliferation of most carcinomas is associated with an overexpression of epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM), a 40-kDa type I transmembrane protein found on epithelial cells yet absent from other cell types. The absence of EpCAM in normal lymphatics makes it an attractive marker for studying lymph node (LN) metastases of carcinomas to improve LN staging accuracy. Herein, we...

We determined the 2.2 A crystal structures of the red fluorescent protein TagRFP and its derivative, the blue fluorescent protein mTagBFP. The crystallographic analysis is consistent with a model in which TagRFP has the trans coplanar anionic chromophore with the conjugated pi-electron system, similar to that of DsRed-like chromophores. Refined conformation of mTagBFP suggests the presence of a...

Protein interactions are critical for normal biological processes and molecular pathogenesis. While it is important to study these interactions, there are limited assays that are performed inside the cell, in the native cell environment, where the majority of protein-protein interactions take place. Here we present a method of studying protein interactions intracellularly using one protein of i...