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Reporter genes are a type of protein-coding gene that are often tagged to a gene of interest. Once inside a target cell, reporter genes usually produce visually identifiable characteristics like fluorescence and luminescence when expressed along with the gene of interest. Thus, reporter genes “report” the presence or absence of genes of interest in an organism, determine the gene expression pattern, or track the physical location of a DNA segment or protein in the cell.

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A Method for Lineage Tracing of Corneal Cells Using Multi-color Fluorescent Reporter Mice

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Published on: December 18, 2015

Multifunctional stimuli-responsive chemogenetic platform for conditional multicolor cell-selective labeling.

Pengfei Chen¹, Rui Wang¹, Ke Wang¹

¹State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomacromolecular Chemical Biology, Hunan University Changsha 410082 P. R. China niezhou.hnu@gmail.com yanhuang@hnu.edu.cn.

Chemical Science

|November 9, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers developed a new chemogenetic platform called srFAST for multicolor cell-selective labeling. This system uses stimuli-responsive ligands to enable on-demand, multicolor imaging of specific cells for biological analysis.

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Area of Science:

Biochemistry
Molecular Biology
Bioimaging

Background:

Multicolor conditional labeling is crucial for analyzing complex biological processes and cellular features.
Existing methods may lack specificity or require complex protocols for simultaneous multicolor imaging.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a versatile chemogenetic platform for stimuli-responsive, multicolor cell-selective labeling.
To enable on-demand and orthogonal labeling of different cell types using a single protein tag.

Main Methods:

Engineered stimuli-responsive Fluorescence-Activating and absorption-Shifting Tag (srFAST) ligands with tailored physicochemical properties.
Utilized organelle-localizable FAST protein for fluorescent labeling.
Designed enzyme-activatable srFAST ligands for cell-specific stimuli response and multicolor capabilities.

Main Results:

Demonstrated conditional fluorescent labeling activated by cell-specific stimuli (photo-stimulation, metabolites, enzymes).
Successfully achieved simultaneous, orthogonal multicolor cell-selective labeling of three distinct cell types.
Showcased the platform's potential for conditional labeling and cellular heterogeneity evaluation.

Conclusions:

The srFAST platform offers a promising strategy for stimuli-responsive chemogenetic labeling through facile molecular engineering.
This approach facilitates conditional multicolor cell-selective labeling with high spatiotemporal precision.
The developed platform has significant potential for advancing cellular heterogeneity evaluation and bioimaging applications.