A tunable, modular approach to fluorescent protease-activated reporters

Proteases are one of the most important and historically utilized classes of drug targets. To effectively interrogate this class of proteins, which encodes nearly 2% of the human proteome, it is necessary to develop effective and cost-efficient methods that report on their activity both in vitro and in vivo. We have developed a robust reporter of caspase proteolytic activity, called caspase-activatable green fluorescent protein (CA-GFP). The caspases play central roles in homeostatic regulation, as they execute programmed cell death, and in drug design, as caspases are involved in diseases ranging from cancer to neurodegeneration. CA-GFP is a genetically encoded dark-to-bright fluorescent reporter of caspase activity in in vitro, cell-based, and animal systems. Based on the CA-GFP platform, we developed reporters that can discriminate the activities of caspase-6 and -7, two highly related proteases. A second series of reporters, activated by human rhinovirus 3C protease, demonstrated that we could alter the specificity of the reporter by reengineering the protease recognition sequence. Finally, we took advantage of the spectrum of known fluorescent proteins to generate green, yellow, cyan, and red reporters, paving the way for multiplex protease monitoring.