Researchers Engineer Cell To Emit Laser.

The Wired (6/13, Brown) "Wired Science" blog reports, "Medical researchers from Harvard University have created the first 'living laser'; a biological cell that's been genetically engineered to produce a visible laser beam." Researchers Seok-Hyun Yun and Malte Gather "genetically engineered human embryonic kidney cells to produce" green fluorescent protein (GFP). The protein, which makes jellyfish bioluminescent, produces green light when it is exposed to blue light. The researchers "placed a single cell between two mirrors" and exposed it to blue light. The cell responded by emitting a visible laser beam that "lasted for a few nanoseconds."

        Popular Science (6/13, Boyle) explains, "The mirrors served as the optical cavity, allowing light to bounce through the cell many times, amplifying it into a coherent green beam that was visible to the naked eye." Gather said living lasers "could have a wide range of medical uses," such as activating medications "or for new forms of imaging."

        PC Mag (6/14 Pachal) reports that "Yun suggests to Nature that his discovery could be used to build microscopic laser guns, which could be deployed in a patient to seek and destroy invaders or diseased cells. He says that cells that "self lase" could even be in the picture." He added that "such applications would face the problem of power and light generation as well as the development of practical nano-scale optical cavities...so they're likely a long way off."