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Fluorescent indicators for Ca2+based on green fluorescent proteins and calmodulin

Abstract

Important Ca2+ signals in the cytosol and organelles are often extremely localized and hard to measure. To overcome this problem we have constructed new fluorescent indicators for Ca2+ that are genetically encoded without cofactors and are targetable to specific intracellular locations. We have dubbed these fluorescent indicators ‘cameleons’. They consist of tandem fusions of a blue- or cyan-emitting mutant of the green fluorescent protein (GFP)1,2, calmodulin3,4,5, the calmodulin-binding peptide M13 (ref. 6), and an enhanced green- or yellow-emitting GFP7,8,9. Binding of Ca2+ makes calmodulin wrap around the M13 domain, increasing the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between the flanking GFPs2. Calmodulin mutations can tune the Ca2+ affinities to measure free Ca2+ concentrations in the range 10−8 to 10−2 M. We have visualized free Ca2+ dynamics in the cytosol, nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum of single HeLa cells transfected with complementary DNAs encoding chimaeras bearing appropriate localization signals. Ca2+ concentration in the endoplasmic reticulum of individual cells ranged from 60 to 400 µM at rest, and 1 to 50 µM after Ca2+ mobilization. FRET is also an indicator of the reversible intermolecular association of cyan-GFP-labelled calmodulin with yellow-GFP-labelled M13. Thus FRET between GFP mutants can monitor localized Ca2+ signals and protein heterodimerization in individual live cells.

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Figure 1: Schematic structures and sequences of cameleons.
Figure 2: Properties of cameleons in vitro.
Figure 3: Imaging of cameleons in HeLa cells.
Figure 4: GFP-based detection of protein association/dissociation.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. R. Adams and A. B. Cubitt for advice, C. Zuker for the GFP antibody, and C. Klee for the original Xenopus calmodulin gene. This work was supported by HHMI (R.Y.T.), NIH (R.Y.T.), HFSP (R.Y.T. and A.M.), MRCC (M.I.) and the Spanish Ministry of Science (J.L.). M.I. is an HHMI international research scholar and MRCC scholar.

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Miyawaki, A., Llopis, J., Heim, R. et al. Fluorescent indicators for Ca2+based on green fluorescent proteins and calmodulin. Nature 388, 882–887 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/42264

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