Engineering Molecular Beacons for Intracellular Imaging

Figure 1

Schematic design of a molecular beacon. Hairpin-shaped MBs have a fluorophore (orange) and a quencher (blue) on the 5′ and 3′ ends, respectively. In the absence of target sequences, the fluorescence of MBs is quenched due to the close proximity between the fluorophore and quencher. After introduction of the complementary sequence, the cDNA will force the stem helix to open, resulting in a fluorescence restoration [4].