Issue 11, 2015

A cell-penetrating protein designed for bimodal fluorescence and magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract

Multimodal imaging is a highly desirable biomedical application since it can provide complementary information from each imaging modality. We propose a protein engineering-based strategy for the construction of a bimodal probe for fluorescence and magnetic resonance imaging. A recombinant protein was generated by the fusion of a supercharged green fluorescence protein (GFP36+) with a lanthanide-binding tag (dLBT) that can stably bind two Gd3+ ions. The GFP36+–dLBT fusion protein showed strong fluorescence and exhibited efficient contrast enhancement in magnetic resonance imaging. This protein probe improves the MR relaxation more efficiently than Gd-DTPA (gadopentetate dimeglumine). The superior cell-penetrating activity of GFP36+ allows the efficient cellular uptake of this fusion protein and it can thus be used as a cellular imaging probe. Dual imaging was conducted in vitro and in mice. This result indicates that the fusion of different functional domains is a feasible approach for making multi-modal imaging agents.

Graphical abstract: A cell-penetrating protein designed for bimodal fluorescence and magnetic resonance imaging

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
29 5 2015
Accepted
11 8 2015
First published
11 8 2015
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2015,6, 6607-6613

Author version available

A cell-penetrating protein designed for bimodal fluorescence and magnetic resonance imaging

Q. Wu, Q. Cheng, S. Yuan, J. Qian, K. Zhong, Y. Qian and Y. Liu, Chem. Sci., 2015, 6, 6607 DOI: 10.1039/C5SC01925G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements