Improved blue, green, and red fluorescent protein tagging vectors for S. cerevisiae

PLoS One. 2013 Jul 2;8(7):e67902. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0067902. Print 2013.

Abstract

Fluorescent protein fusions are a powerful tool to monitor the localization and trafficking of proteins. Such studies are particularly easy to carry out in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae due to the ease with which tags can be introduced into the genome by homologous recombination. However, the available yeast tagging plasmids have not kept pace with the development of new and improved fluorescent proteins. Here, we have constructed yeast optimized versions of 19 different fluorescent proteins and tested them for use as fusion tags in yeast. These include two blue, seven green, and seven red fluorescent proteins, which we have assessed for brightness, photostability and perturbation of tagged proteins. We find that EGFP remains the best performing green fluorescent protein, that TagRFP-T and mRuby2 outperform mCherry as red fluorescent proteins, and that mTagBFP2 can be used as a blue fluorescent protein tag. Together, the new tagging vectors we have constructed provide improved blue and red fluorescent proteins for yeast tagging and three color imaging.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Fluorescence
  • Genetic Vectors / genetics
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / genetics
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / metabolism
  • Luminescent Proteins / genetics*
  • Luminescent Proteins / metabolism
  • Microscopy, Confocal
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Plasmids / genetics*
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins / genetics*
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins / metabolism
  • Red Fluorescent Protein
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae / genetics*
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae / metabolism

Substances

  • Luminescent Proteins
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins
  • blue fluorescent protein, Aequorea victoria
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins