Antibody Panel to Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP)

Introduction

Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) is responsible for bioluminescence in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. This protein has quickly become a powerful research tool for assessing gene expression and subcellular protein distribution in fixed or living cells. Green Fluorescent Protein is excited by and brightly fluoresces when exposed to UV or blue light. This feature makes it ideal as a marker for use in fluorescence microscopy, cytometry, tagging fusion proteins, and assaying transcriptional regulation from gene promoters in vivo. Numerous GFP variants with enhanced and shifted emission spectra (blue, green, and yellow) have been developed through amino acid substitutions at specific residues. They enable a wide range of applications where they have functioned as a cell lineage tracer, reporter of gene expression, or as a measure of protein-protein interactions.

Recombinant DNA technology allows the addition of short pieces of well-defined tags, ""peptides"" or proteins at the amino or c-terminus of target genes, which can provide 'affinity handles' designed to bind specific matrices. Therefore, tags enables a selective identification and purification of the protein of interest. The addition of a green fluorescent protein (GFP) tag to a given gene, creates a stable fusion product that does not appear to interfere with the bioactivity of the protein, or with the biodistribution of the Green Fluorescent Protein tagged product. GFP is a 27 kDa monomeric protein, derived from the bioluminescent jellyfish Aequorea Victoria, autocatalytically forms a fluorescent pigment in which light is produced when energy is transferred from the Ca2+-activated photoprotein aequorin to GFP. Green Fluorescent Protein is acknowledged as a unique tool to monitor dynamic processes in a variety of living cells or organisms. When expressed in either eukaryotic or prokaryotic cells and illuminated by blue or UV light, GFP yields a bright green fluorescence. Light-stimulated GFP fluorescence is species-independent and a fluorescence has been reported from many different types of GFP-expressing hosts, including microbes, invertebrates, vertebratesand plants. Exogenous substrates and cofactors are not required for the fluorescence of Green Fluorescent Protein, since GFP autocatalytically forms a fluorescent pigment from natural amino acids present in the nascent protein. Additionally, detection of GFP and its variants can be performed with living tissues instead of fixed samples. Green Fluorescent Protein signals can be quantified by flow cytometry, confocal scanning laser microscopy, and fluorometric assays. Indeed, many recombinant proteins have been engineered with GFP tags to facilitate the detection, isolation and purification of the proteins. The potential applications have been multiplied by the introduction of brighter GFP mutants and mutants with modified spectral properties, like the blue fluorescent protein (BFP), which allow the independent detection of BFP- and GFP- tagged proteins, even when coexpressed in the same cell.

Monoclonal antibody reacting specifically with Green Fluorescent Protein may be useful in various immunotechniques,to identify the expression of a GFP fusion protein in situ and by immunoblotting, in bacteria, bacterial lysates or cells and tissues transfected with a GFP fusion protein expressing vectors. It may also be used to correlate levels of GFP protein expression with fluorescence intensity and for immunoprecipitation of GFP-proteins.

Antibodies to Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP)

Acris Antibodies offers a wide range of antibodies to detect Green Fluorescent Protein and its variants in various applications. The table below shows a selection of our currently available antibodies.

Available GFP antibodies

GFP antibody, EGFP antibody, EYFP antibody, recombinant GFP antibody, enhanced GFP antibody