Electrochemical fluorescence switching of enhanced green fluorescent protein

Ying Yang; Sanjun Fan; James A Webb; Yuanqing Ma; Jesse Goyette; Xueqian Chen; Katharina Gaus; Richard D Tilley; J Justin Gooding

doi:10.1016/j.bios.2023.115467

Electrochemical fluorescence switching of enhanced green fluorescent protein

Biosens Bioelectron. 2023 Oct 1:237:115467. doi: 10.1016/j.bios.2023.115467. Epub 2023 Jun 25.

Authors

Ying Yang¹, Sanjun Fan¹, James A Webb¹, Yuanqing Ma¹, Jesse Goyette², Xueqian Chen¹, Katharina Gaus², Richard D Tilley³, J Justin Gooding⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Australian Centre for NanoMedicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia.
² EMBL Australia Node in Single Molecule Science, The University of New South Wales, 2052, Sydney, Australia.
³ School of Chemistry and Australian Centre for NanoMedicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia; Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia.
⁴ School of Chemistry and Australian Centre for NanoMedicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia. Electronic address: justin.gooding@unsw.edu.au.

PMID: 37437456
DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2023.115467

Abstract

Switchable fluorescent proteins, for which fluorescence can be switched ON and OFF, are widely used for molecule tracking and super resolution imaging. However, the robust use of the switchable fluorescent proteins is still limited as either the switching is not repeatable, or such switching requires irradiation with coupled lasers of different wavelengths. Herein, we report an electrochemical approach to reversible fluorescence switching for enhanced green fluorescent proteins (EGFP) on indium tin oxide coated glass. Our results demonstrate that negative and positive electrochemical potentials can efficiently switch the fluorescent proteins between the dim (OFF) and bright (ON) states at the single molecule level. The electrochemical fluorescence switching is fast, reversible, and may be performed up to hundreds of cycles before photobleaching occurs. These findings highlight that this method of electrochemical fluorescence switching can be incorporated into advanced fluorescence microscopy.