Protein Fluorescent Tagging - (Jun/13/2007 )
Not sure if this is the right section but anyway. My supervisor has recently seen invitrogen's Q-dots and is impressed by its ability to be bound to a protein of interest and be used in live cell imaging. we've seen a video clip that shows fluorescent q-dots bount to EGF being taken up by a cell and we think it's really cool. We were wondering if we could use this Q-dot by binding it to a protein and injecting it into an oocyte (egg cell) and watching it get transported out of the cell.
Now to the question: Are there any other methods out there where a protein can be conjugated to a fluorescent tag/marker/etc. and be used in live cell imaging? Basically we want to see how the oocyte transports a particular protein out of itself.
Any suggestions or comments would be awesome. Hopefully the explanation is clear enough.
You're probably better off going with a regular fluorophore label (Alexa or Dylight), instead of the quantum dot. I've tried the quantum dots without success and have talked with several others with the same experience. Many of the quantum dots have no fluorescence - they're dead - and they seem to be really inconsistent. Not to mention they are huge compared to a normal fluorophore.
many thanks for this contribution; recently a representative of Invitrogen has handed out a leaflet about Quantum dots, and would give me a good price if I will try; good, that I hesitated; after your short report, I would only try for free...
Hey,
Just to add a new reply. I too have used Qdots a few times and found them useless.
Never again.
Thanks for the replies. We were all thinking in our lab that for the people who managed to get it to work must have puit a TON of effort and time into them.
I actually have a friend that used to work for Quantum Dot Corporation (that's why I tried them). The company went bankrupt (because the product doesn't really seem to work in any application?) and Invitrogen picked them up the technology because it was cheap. What can you expect from a product that has a history of failure? 
Wow, see I've never heard of that. I assumed that invitrogen just took over Q-dot corp as seems to be the norm with biotech companies. I didn't know they went bankrupt. I'm glad someone knows of these things