BROOKINGS: Pharmacy professor Xiangming Guan and his team have developed the first imaging reagent that can determine thiol levels in intact living cells. Previous methods of determining thiol concentrations required the destruction of the cells and tissue.
“We found a compound which can determine thiol density in live cells in a quantitative way through a particular type of chemical reaction,” he said. In the presence of thiol, the chemical gives off fluorescence—the higher the thiol level, the higher the fluorescence. Decreased fluorescence means thiols have been consumed trying to protect the cell, meaning it is more likely to be damaged…