Extremely rapid and reversible optogenetic perturbation of nuclear proteins in living embryos.

ABSTRACT: Many developmental regulators have complex and context-specific roles in different tissues and stages, making the dissection of their function extremely challenging. As regulatory processes often occur within minutes, perturbation methods that match these dynamics are needed. Here, we present the improved light-inducible nuclear export system (iLEXY), an optogenetic loss-of-function approach that triggers translocation of proteins from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. By introducing a series of mutations, we substantially increased LEXY's efficiency and generated variants with different recovery times. iLEXY enables rapid (t_1/2 < 30 s), efficient, and reversible nuclear protein depletion in embryos, and is generalizable to proteins of diverse sizes and functions. Applying iLEXY to

SUBMITTER: Kogler AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8387026 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature