Multicolor Imaging of Bifacial Activities of Estrogens

The present protocol introduces multicolor imaging of bifacial activities of an estrogen. For the multicolor imaging, the authors fabricated two single-chain probes emitting green or red bioluminescence (named Simer-G and -R, respectively) from click beetle luciferase (CBLuc) green and red: Simer-R consists of the ligand binding domain of estrogen receptor (ER LBD) and the Src homology-2 (SH2) domain of Src, which are sandwiched between split-CBLuc red (CBLuc-R). On the other hand, Simer-G emitting red light consists of the ER LBD and a common consensus sequence of coactivators (LXXLL motif), which are inserted between split-CBLuc green (CBLuc-G). This probe set creates fingerprinting spectra from the characteristic green and red bioluminescence in response to agonistic and antagonistic activities of a ligand of interest. The present protocol further provides a unique methodology to calculate characteristic estrogenicity scores of various ligands from the spectra.