GFP truncation

[Peter Wang]

tomasd at bdg10.niddk.nih.gov (Tomas Drgon) wrote:
>Does somebody know what happens to the GFP if I chop off C-terminal say 30
>amino acids (BstBI site)? Will it still shine?

Tomas:

Apparently you cannot shorten GFP significantly (1 residue at the amino-end 
and <10-15 at the carboxy-end, see reference below) and still have 
fluorescence.

There is a newsgroup just about fluorescent proteins, especially GFP:
     BIONET.MOLBIO.PROTEINS.FLUORESCENT
and there was a recent similar question and reply, which I've clipped in 
below.

krasel at wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de (Cornelius Krasel) wrote:
>Stefan Wieland (swieland at sun2.ruf.uni-freiburg.de) wrote:
>> We are looking for the shortest,but still functional GFP protein.
>> Does someone know, whether one can truncate GFP without loosing activity?
>
>Not much. Check out
>
>@article{cubitt:95,
>        author  = {Andrew B. Cubitt and Roger Heim and Stephen R. Adams
>                   and Aileen E. Boyd and Larry A. Gross and Roger Y. Tsien},
>        title   = {Understanding, improving and using green fluorescent
>                   proteins.},
>        journal = TIBS,
>        volume  = 20,
>        pages   = {448--455},
>        year    = 1995
>}

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Peter Wang, M.D., Ph.D.
MRC Centre for Protein Engineering,
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