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Mike Lacy

Mike Lacy is a Scientific Curator at Addgene. He received his PhD in molecular biophysics at Yale and worked in editing and publishing. He loves fluorescence microscopy, open science, and helping scientists share and discover the latest tools for their research.

Blog articles by Mike Lacy

Fluorescent Proteins

Live and Let Dye: Self-Labeling Protein Tags

Mike Lacy April 16, 2024

If you take a look in a typical lab freezer, you’ll probably find lots of different plasmids containing the same protein of interest tagged with different fusion proteins for different experiments over the years — a green fluorescent protein, a red fluorescent protein, a fancy ...
Four schematics of protein labeling strategies with pros and cons list for each.
Optogenetics

New Optogenetic Tools for Cytoskeleton and Membrane Control

Mike Lacy September 28, 2023

Optogenetics gives you the power to control cells or organisms with the flip of a switch. You may be familiar with popular light-sensitive ion channels used to control activities like neuronal signaling — think of a mouse with an LED brain implant or a worm wiggling back and ...
Schematic showing CIB1-fluorescent protein-Rab attached to vesicles and free CRY2 protein. 488 nm light causes CRY2 and CIB1 to bind each other and form a cluster with the Rab protein and vesicles.
Antibodies

Antibodies 101: Multiplex Immunofluorescence

Mike Lacy May 23, 2023

You may be familiar with immunofluorescence (IF, often referred to as immunocytochemistry (ICC) when the sample is cultured cells or immunohistochemistry (IHC) with tissues), where an antibody binds a target protein in your sample, then a fluorescently labeled secondary antibody ...
Graphic showing sequential multiplexing flow (left) and simultaneous multiplexing (right), converging through a flow chart to a multicolor composite image.
Fluorescent Proteins

Hot Biosensors 2022: Year-End Roundup

Mike Lacy December 6, 2022

Here at Addgene’s headquarters, the skies are getting dark and wintry with the end of year approaching. We’re always looking for something to brighten our day, whether it’s memories of summer or just a bright new plasmid. One area with lots of bright new plasmids is our ...
Schematic showing MTRIA biosensors are generated by inserting a circularly-permuted GFP into an intracellular loop of various G-protein-coupled receptors
Science Communication

Summer SciComm: Preprints

Mike Lacy August 16, 2022

As a scientist, perhaps the most important part of your research is communicating the results of the work. Yes, those control experiments are important - but without letting other scientists know the results, your work won’t have any impact!
An image of CERN accelerator with
Fluorescent Proteins

Split Fluorescent Proteins for Studying Protein-Protein Interactions

Mike Lacy May 3, 2022

Many, many techniques are available to assess protein-protein interactions. One popular approach is to fuse a protein of interest to each part of a split fluorescent protein (FP) and measure the signal produced when the candidate proteins’ interaction brings the pieces of the FP ...

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