Use of mCherry Red fluorescent protein for studies of protein localization and gene expression in Clostridium difficile.

ABSTRACT: Fluorescent proteins are powerful reporters in biology, but most require O2 for chromophore maturation, making them inherently difficult to use in anaerobic bacteria. Clostridium difficile, a strict anaerobe with a genomic GC content of only 29%, is the leading cause of hospital-acquired diarrhea in developed countries, and new methods for studying this pathogen are sorely needed. We recently demonstrated that a cyan fluorescent protein called CFPopt that has been codon optimized for production in low-GC bacteria can be used to study protein localization in C. difficile provided the cells are fixed prior to exposure to air. We describe here a codon-optimized variant of mCherry (mCherryOpt) that exhibits faster acquisition of fluorescence and a better signal-to-noise ratio than CFPopt. We u

SUBMITTER: Ransom EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4325159 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature