Proteins of the green fluorescent protein family represent a convenient experimental model to study evolution of novelty at the molecular level. Here, we focus on the origin of Kaede-like red fluorescent proteins characteristic of the corals of the Faviina suborder. We demonstrate, using an original approach involving resurrection and analysis of the library of possible evolutionary intermediat...

Chloride channels belong to a superfamily of ion channels that permit passive passage of anions, mainly chloride, across cell membrane. They play a variety of important physiological roles in regulation of cytosolic pH, cell volume homeostasis, organic solute transport, cell migration, cell proliferation, and differentiation. However, little is known about the functional regulation of these cha...

Organelles are surrounded by membranes with a distinct lipid and protein composition. While it is well established that lipids affect protein functioning and vice versa, it has been only recently suggested that elevated membrane protein concentrations may affect the shape and organization of membranes. We therefore analyzed the effects of high chloroplast envelope protein concentrations on memb...

Forkhead box O 1 (Foxo1) controls the expression of proteins that carry out processes leading to skeletal muscle atrophy, making Foxo1 of therapeutic interest in conditions of muscle wasting. The transcription of Foxo1-regulated proteins is dependent on the translocation of Foxo1 to the nucleus, which can be repressed by insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) treatment. The role of Foxo1 in muscl...

Molecular events and the interdependence of the two rotavirus nonstructural proteins, NSP5 and NSP2, in producing viroplasm-like structures (VLS) were previously evaluated by using transient cellular coexpression of the genes for the two proteins, and VLS domains as well as the NSP2-binding region of NSP5 were mapped in the context of NSP2. Review of the previous studies led us to postulate tha...

The ultrastructural characterization of neuronal compartments in intact tissue labeled with green fluorescent protein (GFP) remains a frequently encountered challenge, despite work establishing photooxidation of GFP in cultured cells. However, most applications require the detection of GFP or GFP fusion proteins expressed in intact tissue. Here, we report that illumination of GFP variants in ox...

Bicaudal-D (Bic-D) is essential for the establishment of oocyte fate and subsequently for polarity formation within the developing Drosophila oocyte. To find out where in the germ cells Bic-D performs its various functions we made transgenic flies expressing a chimeric Bic-D::GFP fusion protein. Once Bic-D::GFP preferentially accumulates in the oocyte, it shows an initial anterior localization ...

Point mutations in the B1 subunit of vacuolar H+ -ATPase are associated with impaired ability of the distal nephron to secrete acid (distal renal tubular acidosis). For testing of the hypothesis that these mutations interfere with assembly and trafficking of the H+ -ATPase, constructs that mimic seven known point mutations in inherited distal renal tubular acidosis (M) or wild-type (WT) B1 were...

Most GFP-like fluorescent proteins exhibit small Stokes shifts (10-45 nm) due to rigidity of the chromophore environment that excludes non-fluorescent relaxation to a ground state. An unusual near-infrared derivative of the red fluorescent protein mKate, named TagRFP675, exhibits the Stokes shift, which is 30 nm extended comparing to that of the parental protein. In physiological conditions, Ta...

Split reporter proteins capable of self-association and reactivation have applications in biomedical research, but designing these proteins, especially the selection of appropriate split points, has been somewhat arbitrary. We describe a new methodology to facilitate generating split proteins using split GFP as a self-association module. We first inserted the entire GFP module at one of several...