[Zbrafish] td-tomato vs mcherry as a red fluo reporter

[Philippe Herbomel]

Dear All,

We are wondering about the best red fluorescent reporter to make  
transgenic zebrafish with.
If one does not want to target the protein to a particular  
compartment (membrane or nucleus), DsRed2, the most used presently,   
is probably the best (very bright, with reasonable maturation time).
If otherwise, the most used presently is mCherry, which is quite (4- 
fold) less bright.
Now from the Tsien lab papers' data, td-Tomato appears both much  
(over 5-fold) brighter than mCherry, and still compatible with  
membrane or nuclear targeting;
and indeed at least two papers then provided evidence that td-tomato  
was not only far superior to mcherry but even to GFP (in terms of  
brightness) as a reporter in transgenic mice.
Now surprisingly, when a colleague of us injected either mcherry or  
tdtomato mRNA into 1-cell zebrafish embryos,
she found td-Tomato to be less bright than mcherry.
So my question is: has anyone found this too, and/or tried to make  
transgenic zebrafish with td-Tomato as reporter ? And what about its  
actual brightness (and decay upon illumination) in zebrafish embryos/ 
larvae, as compared to the mcherry and dsred2 ?

Thanks in advance for your testimonies on this.
I will post a summary of your responses !

Philippe Herbomel


–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Philippe Herbomel
Unite Macrophages et Developpement de l'Immunite
Departement de Biologie du Developpement
Institut Pasteur
25 rue du Dr Roux, 75724 Paris cedex 15, France

tel. : 33 1 44 38 95 29   mobile: 33 6 73 35 74 20
fax : 33 1 45 68 89 21
http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/RAR/RAR2006/Mdi-en.html
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
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