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Updated: May 4, 2026

Real-time Imaging of Single Engineered RNA Transcripts in Living Cells Using Ratiometric Bimolecular Beacons
Published on: August 6, 2014
Background free imaging of single mRNAs in live cells using split fluorescent proteins
Bin Wu1, Jiahao Chen2, Robert H Singer1
11] Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University [2] Gruss Lipper Biophotonic Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
Abstract:
We describe a technique for imaging single mRNAs in living cells based on fluorescent protein (FP) complementation. We employ the high affinity interaction between the bacterial phage MS2/PP7 coat proteins and their respective RNA binding motifs as an RNA scaffold to bring two halves of a split-FP together to image single reporter mRNAs without background fluorescence.

