Question: Can you explain the video in your profile?

Steve Briddon answered on 22 Apr 2021:

Hi Joshua! Thanks for asking about it and reading my profile. I’ll have a go!

So this is an experiment using some cells on one of our microscopes. Each of the small roughly circular/oval objects which gradually appear in red/green is an individual cell. The red colour is the “glow-in-the-dark” (we call this “fluorescence”) drug which we’ve made and the green colour is a special fluorescent chemical that shows us the level of calcium in the cell. The higher the calcium – the brighter the green colour.

What you see is the red fluorescent drug sticking to the cell surface (to a protein on the membrane of the cell called a “receptor”). This triggers a signal inside the cell which makes the calcium go up. So as the red signal goes up, this is the drug biding. the green going up is the signal being activated in the cell.

I hope that makes sense to you!