Tuning the Electronic Transition Energy of Indole via Substitution: Application to Identify Tryptophan-Based Chromophores That Absorb and Emit Visible Light

Fluorescent amino acids (FAAs) offer significant advantages over fluorescent proteins in applications where the fluorophore size needs to be limited or minimized. A long-sought goal in biological spectroscopy/microcopy is to...

Ribosome-mediated incorporation of fluorescent amino acids into peptides in vitro

We expand the substrate scope of ribosome-mediated incorporation to α-amino acids with a variety of fluorescent groups on the sidechain.

Synthesis of new fluorescent amino acids with a triazolopyridine core: diacid sensors

A new family of amino acid containing pyridine–triazolopyridine cores has been prepared by means of a copper catalysed reaction.

A Rationally Designed Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetase for Genetically Encoded Fluorescent Amino Acids

The incorporation of non-canonical amino acids into proteins has emerged as a promising strategy to manipulate and study protein structure-function relationships with superior precision in vitro and in vivo. To date, fluorescent non-canonical amino acids (f-ncAA) have been successfully incorporated in proteins expressed in bacterial systems, Xenopus oocytes, and HEK-293T cells. Here, we describe the rational generation of an orthogonal aminoacyltRNA synthetase based on the E. coli tyrosine synthetase that is capable of encoding the f-ncAA tyr-coumarin in HEK-293T cells.