Rongkun Tao, Mei Shi, Yejun Zou, Di Cheng, Qiaohui Wang, Renmei Liu, Aoxue Wang, Jiahuan Zhu, Lei Deng, HanYang Hu, Xianjun Chen, Jiulin Du, Weiping Zhu, Yuzheng Zhao, Yi Yang
Engineered fluorescent indicators for visualizing mercury ion (Hg2+ ) are powerful tools to illustrate the intracellular distribution and serious toxicity of the ion. However, the sensitive and specific detection of Hg2+ in living cells and in vivo is challenging. This paper reported the development of fluorescent indicators for Hg2+ in green or red color by inserting a circularly permuted fluorescent protein into a highly mercury-specific repressor. These sensors provided a rapid, sensitive, specific, and real-time read-out of Hg2+ dynamics in solutions, bacteria, subcellular organelles of mammalian cells, and zebrafish, thereby providing a useful new method for Hg2+ detection and bioimaging...
April 20, 2018: Free Radical Biology & Medicine