Singlet oxygen triplet energy transfer-based imaging technology for mapping protein–protein proximity in intact cells

• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5072
• Publication Date: 2014-06-06T12:46:42Z
• Authors: Tsz-Leung To; Michael J. Fadul; Xiaokun Shu
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences; Energy Transfer; Singlet Oxygen; Proteins; Saccharomyces cerevisiae; Reactive Oxygen Species; 7. Clean energy; Article; Protein Binding

Many cellular processes are carried out by large protein complexes that can span several tens of nanometres. Whereas forster resonance energy transfer has a detection range of <10 nm, here we report the theoretical development and experimental demonstration of a new fluorescence-imaging technology with a detection range of up to several tens of nanometres: singlet oxygen triplet energy transfer. We demonstrate that our method confirms the topology of a large protein complex in intact cells, which spans from the endoplasmic reticulum to the outer mitochondrial membrane and the matrix. This new method is thus suited for mapping protein proximity in large protein complexes.