Enhanced beetle luciferase for high-resolution bioluminescence imaging.
We developed an enhanced green-emitting luciferase (ELuc) to be used as a bioluminescence imaging (BLI) probe. ELuc exhibits a light signal in mammalian cells that is over 10-fold stronger than that of the firefly luciferase (FLuc), which is the most widely used luciferase reporter gene. We showed that ELuc produces a strong light signal in primary cells and tissues and that it enables the visualization of gene expression with high temporal resolution at the single-cell level. Moreover, we successfully imaged the nucleocytoplasmic shuttling of importin alpha by fusing ELuc at the intracellular level. These results demonstrate that the use of ELuc allows a BLI spatiotemporal resolution far greater than that provided by FLuc.
Nakajima
Yoshihiro
Y
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Ikeda, Osaka, Japan. y-nakajima@aist.go.jp
Yamazaki
Tomomi
T
Nishii
Shigeaki
S
Noguchi
Takako
T
Hoshino
Hideto
H
Niwa
Kazuki
K
Viviani
Vadim R
VR
Ohmiya
Yoshihiro
Y
D000818:Animals; D001517:Coleoptera / Q000201:enzymology; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D028884:Karyopherins / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism; D008156:Luciferases; D008163:Luminescent Measurements; D008164:Luminescent Proteins; D015336:Molecular Probe Techniques; D015335:Molecular Probes; D021381:Protein Transport; D011506:Proteins / Q000032:analysis*
D028884:Karyopherins; D008164:Luminescent Proteins; D015335:Molecular Probes; D011506:Proteins; D008156:Luciferases