Imaging tools in cellular and molecular biology have long relied on organic fluorophores to observe microorganisms or various cell constituents. The advent of semiconductor nanoparticles known as quantum dots (QDs) has offered the possibility to use this new class of fluorescent probes with very advantageous optical properties in cell biology. The imaging of transmembrane potential and ionic currents is of significant importance for monitoring the activity of the cell. It remains possible with relatively complicated instruments and methods such as patch clamping. A complementary approach to view the dynamics of ion channels with modern and efficient fluorophores is therefore of great interest to the field of biology in general. / We developed a construct based on the FRET signal between QDs and organic fluorescent dyes to monitor the conformational changes of voltage gated sodium channels. The amino acid histidine was used as a "landing platform" for QDs and the bacterial sodium channel NaChBac was chosen for testing. This study focused on the preliminary steps of the project and aimed to characterize the electrophysiological behavior of the histidine-tagged channel. The whole-cell configuration of patch clamping was the tool we used to understand the differences between the wild-type and the histidine-tagged variants of the channels. We also explore the possibility to land QDs on the histidine tag.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.116024 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Khatchadourian, Rafael Aharon. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Engineering (Department of Biomedical Engineering Dept.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002826133, proquestno: AAIMR66960, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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