Question

You are studying a suspected member of the nuclear receptor signaling proteins using an antibody that you have raised against the protein. You are studying cells in tissue culture using fluorescence microscopy and observe that when you add the ligand of the nuclear receptor to the cell, the protein migrates to the nucleus. What two predictions can you make about the protein based on this observation, and what subsequent experiments would you do to test these predictions?

this is all the information i was given.

Answer 1

This experiment shows that this is class I nuclear receptor. These nuclear receptors are present in cytosol that dissociate from heat shock proteins upon binding to a ligand and migrate to the nucleus. Inside the nucleus, these regulate the expression of specific genes. Thus, following predictions can be made:-

1. This is a class I nuclear receptor protein because upon ligand binding it migrated from cytosol to the nucleus. So it is confirmed that the protein of interest belongs to nuclear receptor family. This leads to the regulation of gene expression of specific genes. This can further be confirmed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR).

2. The antibody in this experiment will be used to identify the protein. If it binds to the suspected protein the fluorescence will be observed, otherwise not. To further verify the results, western blotting can be performed to study the expression of this particular protein.

Note : The description of results about the antibody experiment by fluorescence microscopy should have been provided to better explain the question.