Bioluminescent jellyfish proteins used to produce low-energy laser
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.0210049
New Scientist : To develop better and safer tools for use in biomedical imaging, researchers have worked with both conventional and polariton lasers. Neither has proven satisfactory because the first requires a lot of energy and the second, extremely low temperatures. Now Malte Gather of the University of St. Andrews in the UK and colleagues have overcome both problems by engineering a laser from the green fluorescent proteins found in jellyfish. The researchers placed a thin film of fluorescent protein between two mirrors and got it to fluoresce by shining blue light on it. The result is an organic polariton laser that could be embedded in living tissue and used to map and differentiate among thousands of types of cells.
