2018 Volume 83 Issue 4 Pages 347-350
Imaging techniques with split fluorescent proteins are based on the reconstruction of separated asymmetric protein fragments. Although each fragment alone has no fluorescence, a reconstructed protein after the association of its constituent fragments recovers its fluorescence. In the case of the split-GFP assay, GFP is divided between the 10th and 11th β sheets to generate two asymmetric fragments, GFP1–10 and GFP11. GFP11 is a small tag that minimally disturbs the localization and dynamics of a fused protein. Thus, the split fluorescent protein assay enables analyses of protein localization patterns, protein–protein interactions and the topology of membrane proteins.