GFP explanation and cool pictures!

So I was just going to respond to Matt's comment, but I got into it enough that I wanted to share some pictures and cool stuff. GFP is a protein made by a certain species of jelly fish. They know the amino acid sequence and the DNA sequence. So when the gene is transcribed and translated into the protein, the cell or a particular part of the cell (depends on how much magnification you are using) will glow green when you shine a light on them of a specific wavelength. One of the more popular ways to use GFP (although there are many many more ways to use it) is to add the DNA sequence of GFP onto the end of a gene that you want to see. This is called a fusion protein because you have basically cut and paste two proteins together. For example, if I want to know where Rab5 is working (it's a protein involved in vesicles that transport material into the cell) I might make a Rab5::GFP fusion sequence, and put it in a cell. Depending on the cell, the protein will probably be made in a couple of days and then you can look at the cells and see that the vesicles that are bringing stuff into the cell are glowing green. This is why GFP is often refered to as a reporter protein because it can tell you were something is. In my project, as a control we transfered GFP into a cell line just to make sure the cell could take in foreign DNA and how long it would take. Here are two pictures: the first one shows the cells under normal light and the second shows the same cells under fluorescence. You can see that not all of them turn green, which is to be expected because nothin gis 100%. However, these cells are actually really good.
For those of you that are sick of my science rants, not to worry. I'm going to the NC state fair tomorrow (which is David's birthday too by the way), and I'll have a lot to talk about!

under normal light

under fluorescence