Science
fromNature
2 weeks agoDaily briefing: Gene that causes obesity also shields against heart disease
Rare MC4R gene variants associate with obesity yet correspond to lower LDL cholesterol and reduced heart disease rates.
Led by Xin Zhang, a chemist at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China, the team designed more than two dozen fluorescent proteins that differ not only by colour, but also in how much time they spend in their excited state - a property called the fluorescence lifetime. The researchers call these molecules time-resolved fluorescent proteins, or tr-FPs. Their findings were published online last month in Cell.