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Genetic Code Expansion in Zebrafish Embryos and Its Application to Optical Control of Cell Signaling.

Site-specific incorporation of unnatural amino acids into proteins provides a powerful tool to study protein function. Here we report genetic code expansion in zebrafish embryos and its application to the optogenetic control of cell signaling. We genetically encoded four unnatural amino acids with a...

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Published in:Journal of the American Chemical Society Vol. 139; no. 27; pp. 9100 - 9104
Main Authors: Liu, Jihe, Hemphill, James, Samanta, Subhas, Tsang, Michael, Deiters, Alexander
Format: Article
Published: American Chemical Society 7/12/2017
Subjects:
Zebra danio embryos
Cellular signal transduction
Genetic code
Fish embryology
Fish genetics
Optogenetics
Fishes
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:Site-specific incorporation of unnatural amino acids into proteins provides a powerful tool to study protein function. Here we report genetic code expansion in zebrafish embryos and its application to the optogenetic control of cell signaling. We genetically encoded four unnatural amino acids with a diverse set of functional groups, which included a photocaged lysine that was applied to the light-activation of luciferase and kinase activity. This approach enables versatile manipulation of protein function in live zebrafish embryos, a transparent and commonly used model organism to study embryonic development.