mScarlet: a bright monomeric red fluorescent protein for cellular imaging.

Bindels, Daphne S; Haarbosch, Lindsay; van Weeren, Laura; Postma, Marten; Wiese, Katrin E; Mastop, Marieke; Aumonier, Sylvain; Gotthard, Guillaume et al. · Nat Methods · 2017

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We report the engineering of mScarlet, a truly monomeric red fluorescent protein with record brightness, quantum yield (70%) and fluorescence lifetime (3.9 ns). We developed mScarlet starting with a consensus synthetic template and using improved spectroscopic screening techniques; mScarlet's crystal structure reveals a planar and rigidified chromophore. mScarlet outperforms existing red fluorescent proteins as a fusion tag, and it is especially useful as a Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) acceptor in ratiometric imaging.

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