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Working with green fluorescent proteins: Tools and properties

Working with green fluorescent proteins: Tools and properties

Overview about the three most commonly used classes of green fluorescent proteins

Jellyfish Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) and its derivatives are still the most frequently used fluorescent proteins in biomedical research. Recently, additional green fluorescent proteins have been discovered in higher animals such as crustaceans and lancelets. These FPs share a common fold, but diverge widely in their primary sequence. Thus, they require novel, dedicated antibody research tools. Here is an overview about EGFP (the most commonly used GFP derivative), TurboGFP and mNeonGreen.

	EGFP (enhanced GFP)	TurboGFP	mNeonGreen
Discovery/ first publication	1995	2004	2013
Structure
Origin	GFP from Jellyfish Aequorea victoria	Tetrameric CopGFP from copepod Pontellina plumata	Tetrameric LanYFP from Lancelet Branchiostoma lanceolatum
Sequence identity to EGFP	(100%)	~20%	20-25%
Derived from GFP?	Yes	No	No
Structure	Monomer	Dimer	Monomer
Length/ molecular weight (MW)	239 amino acids, 26.9 kDa	2x 232 amino acids, 2x 26 kDa	237 amino acids, 26.6 kDa
Excitation / Emission maximum	488/ 509 nm	482 nm/ 502 nm	506 nm/ 517 nm
Common variants	GFP, CFP, YFP, Venus, BFP and many more	TurboGFP, CopGFP, max GFP, maxFP-Green	mNeonGreen
Research Tools	Immunoprecipitation GFP-Trap Immunofluorescence GFP-Booster, GFP antibody [PABG1] Western Blotting GFP antibody [3H9] GFP antibody [PABG1]	Immunoprecipitation TurboGFP-Trap	Immunoprecipitation mNeonGreen-Trap Immunofluorescence mNeonGreen antibody [32F6] Western Blotting mNeonGreen antibody [32F6]