A Protein-Protein Interaction Assay FlimPIA Based on the Functional Complementation of Mutant Firefly Luciferases

There is a significant focus on detecting and assaying protein-protein interactions (PPIs) in biology and biotechnology. Protein-fragment complementation assay (PCA) is one of the most widely used methods to detect PPI by splitting the enzyme-coding or fluorescent protein-coding polypeptide, as well as Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET). Here, we describe a novel PPI assay FlimPIA (firefly luminescent intermediate-based protein-protein interaction assay) by a unique approach of splitting the two major catalytic steps (half reactions) of firefly luciferase (FLuc).