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A synthetic luciferin improves bioluminescence imaging in live mice
Melanie S Evans1, Joanna P Chaurette2, Spencer T Adams3
11] Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA. [2].
Nature Methods
|February 11, 2014
Abstract:
Firefly luciferase is the most widely used optical reporter for noninvasive bioluminescence imaging (BLI) in rodents. BLI relies on the ability of the injected luciferase substrate D-luciferin to access luciferase-expressing cells and tissues within the animal. Here we show that injection of mice with a synthetic luciferin, CycLuc1, improves BLI with existing luciferase reporters and enables imaging in the brain that could not be achieved with D-luciferin.

