LucY: A Versatile New Fluorescent Reporter Protein

PLoS One. 2015 Apr 23;10(4):e0124272. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124272. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

We report on the discovery, isolation, and use of a novel yellow fluorescent protein. Lucigen Yellow (LucY) binds one FAD molecule within its core, thus shielding it from water and maintaining its structure so that fluorescence is 10-fold higher than freely soluble FAD. LucY displays excitation and emission spectra characteristic of FAD, with 3 excitation peaks at 276 nm, 377 nm, and 460 nm and a single emission peak at 530 nm. These excitation and emission maxima provide the large Stokes shift beneficial to fluorescence experimentation. LucY belongs to the MurB family of UDP-N-acetylenolpyruvylglucosamine reductases. The high resolution crystal structure shows that in contrast to other structurally resolved MurB enzymes, LucY does not contain a potentially quenching aromatic residue near the FAD isoalloxazine ring, which may explain its increased fluorescence over related proteins. Using E. coli as a system in which to develop LucY as a reporter, we show that it is amenable to circular permutation and use as a reporter of protein-protein interaction. Fragmentation between its distinct domains renders LucY non-fluorescent, but fluorescence can be partially restored by fusion of the fragments to interacting protein domains. Thus, LucY may find application in Protein-fragment Complementation Assays for evaluating protein-protein interactions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Bacterial Proteins / chemistry*
  • Bacterial Proteins / genetics
  • Bacterial Proteins / metabolism
  • Crystallography, X-Ray
  • Escherichia coli / metabolism
  • Flavin-Adenine Dinucleotide / chemistry
  • Flavin-Adenine Dinucleotide / metabolism
  • Genes, Reporter
  • Luminescent Proteins / chemistry*
  • Luminescent Proteins / genetics
  • Luminescent Proteins / metabolism
  • Protein Interaction Domains and Motifs
  • Protein Structure, Tertiary
  • Recombinant Proteins / biosynthesis
  • Recombinant Proteins / chemistry
  • Recombinant Proteins / isolation & purification
  • Spectrometry, Fluorescence

Substances

  • Bacterial Proteins
  • Luminescent Proteins
  • Recombinant Proteins
  • yellow fluorescent protein, Bacteria
  • Flavin-Adenine Dinucleotide

Grants and funding

Use of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Use of the LS-CAT Sector 21 was supported by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the Michigan Technology Tri-Corridor (Grant 085P1000817). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.