ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to summarize currently available variants of green fluorescent protein (GFP) and their potential applications in molecular medicine, with special emphasis on its application in tumor angiogenesis and physiology studies. There are many methods to label cells and proteins with GFP as it is a rather small protein with a robust three-dimensional structure that is quite resilient to external disturbances. At the cellular level, the GFPs have greatly facilitated people’s understanding of tumor cell structures and signaling pathways. Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels from existing vessels, is a key to tumor development and tumor invasion. Invasion and metastasis are key steps in tumor development. Attempts to study tumor cell migration were carried out many years ago with fluorescent dye-labeled tumor cells, and many important discoveries were made. GFP provides a whole new way to carry out experiments in tumor invasion and metastasis studies.
