Firefly Luciferase Complementation Imaging Assay for Protein-Protein Interactions in Plants

The development of sensitive and versatile techniques to detect protein-protein interactions in vivo is important for understanding protein functions. The previously described techniques, fluorescence resonance energy transfer and bimolecular fluorescence complementation, which are used widely for protein-protein interaction studies in plants, require extensive instrumentation. To facilitate protein-protein interaction studies in plants, we adopted the luciferase complementation imaging assay. The amino-terminal and carboxyl-terminal halves of the firefly luciferase reconstitute active luciferase enzyme only when fused to two interacting proteins, and that can be visualized with a low-light imaging system. A…

• MO
  Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China

  Award: 2003-AA210080