Bioluminescence Imaging

Molecular Imaging Using Bioluminescence

Recent progress in the development of non-invasive imaging technologies continues to strengthen the role of molecular imaging in biological research. Small animal imaging with bioluminescence has been validated recently in a variety of research models and have been shown to provide continuous quantitative monitoring of the location(s), magnitude, and time-variation of gene delivery and/or expre...

Cellular bioluminescence imaging.

Bioluminescence imaging of live cells has recently been recognized as an important alternative to fluorescence imaging. Fluorescent probes are much brighter than bioluminescent probes (luciferase enzymes) and, therefore, provide much better spatial and temporal resolution and much better contrast for delineating cell structure. However, with bioluminescence imaging there is virtually no backgro...

Measuring prions by bioluminescence imaging.

Prions are infectious proteins that cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases. Because astrocytic gliosis marked by the deposition of fibrils composed of GFAP is a prominent feature of prion disease, we asked whether GFAP might be used as a surrogate marker for prions. To interrogate this posit, we inoculated prions into transgenic (Tg) mice expressing luciferase (luc) under the GFAP gene (Gfap) p...

Neurobiological insights from bioluminescence imaging

Bioluminescence imaging has already been used for two decades to visualize cells and target genes completely non-invasively. Most frequently, firefly luciferase is applied which efficiently converts the substrate D-Luciferin in an enzymatic reaction that is dependent on ATP, Mg2+ and O2. Commercial imaging equipment is available to capture the emitted photons when luciferase is expressed in cel...

Bioluminescence Imaging of Mouse Pancreas