Sadikot Ruxana T, Blackwell Timothy S
Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Veterans Affairs, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2008;477:383-94. doi: 10.1007/978-1-60327-517-0_29.
Molecular imaging offers many unique opportunities to study biological processes in intact organisms. Bioluminescence is the emission of light from biochemical reactions that occur within a living organism. Luciferase has been used as a reporter gene in transgenic mice but, until bioluminescence imaging was described, the detection of luciferase activity required either sectioning of the animal or excision of tissue and homogenization to measure enzyme activities in a conventional luminometer. Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) is based on the idea that biological light sources can be incorporated into cells and animal models artificially that does not naturally express the luminescent genes. This imaging modality has proven to be a very powerful methodology to detect luciferase reporter activity in intact animal models. This form of optical imaging is low cost and noninvasive and facilitates real-time analysis of disease processes at the molecular level in living organisms. Bioluminescence provides a noninvasive method to monitor gene expression in vivo and has enormous potential to elucidate the pathobiology of lung diseases in intact mouse models, including models of inflammation/injury, infection, and cancer.
分子成像为研究完整生物体中的生物过程提供了许多独特的机会。生物发光是指生物体内部发生的生化反应所发出的光。荧光素酶已被用作转基因小鼠中的报告基因，但在生物发光成像被描述之前，检测荧光素酶活性需要对动物进行切片或切除组织并匀浆，以便在传统的发光计中测量酶活性。生物发光成像（BLI）基于这样一种理念，即生物光源可以人工引入到原本不自然表达发光基因的细胞和动物模型中。这种成像方式已被证明是一种非常强大的方法，可用于检测完整动物模型中的荧光素酶报告基因活性。这种光学成像形式成本低且无创，有助于在分子水平上对活体生物中的疾病过程进行实时分析。生物发光提供了一种无创方法来监测体内基因表达，并且在阐明完整小鼠模型中肺部疾病的病理生物学方面具有巨大潜力，包括炎症/损伤、感染和癌症模型。
