Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 17, 2026

Real-time Imaging of Single Engineered RNA Transcripts in Living Cells Using Ratiometric Bimolecular Beacons
Published on: August 6, 2014
Molecular beacons and related probes for intracellular RNA imaging
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. philip.santangelo@bme.gatech.edu
Abstract:
Accurately imaging endogenous or non-engineered RNA in live cells is not an easy task. Ideally, a probe and imaging strategy will have the following properties: (1) functional probes will be delivered to the desired cellular compartment, (2) they will achieve the correct level of affinity to bind target RNA efficiently but not inhibit their function, (3) be sensitive enough to allow for the accurate detection of the cellular RNA population, and (4) allow for the tracking of RNA through biogenesis, transport, translation, and degradation pathways. In this review, the capabilities of current nucleic acid-based probes and strategies used to image native RNA are discussed and analyzed, and probe and strategy recommendations for new users are given. The review is concluded by addressing topics for future research, all in the hope of achieving the ideal RNA imaging probe and strategy.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Labeling DNA Probes
Radioisotopes, fluorophores, or small molecule binding partners like biotin or digoxigenin, are the most widely used reporter tags for labeling DNA probes. These labels can be attached to the probe DNA molecule via...
In-situ Hybridization
Types of probes and labels
A probe is a complementary strand of DNA or RNA that binds to corresponding nucleotide sequences in a cell. Many...
RNA-seq
Before the discovery of RNA-seq, microarray-based methods and Sanger sequencing were used for transcriptome analysis. However, while microarray-based...
DNA Microarrays

