Team:Cambridge/Bioluminescence/Colour

The peak emission wavelength of luciola cruciata luciferase can be altered by single amino acid changes as reported by Kajiyama and Nakano. Different coloured outputs, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, allow the most appropriate wavelength of output for a particular detector to be chosen. By putting different coloured luciferases under promoters which respond to different inputs, co-reporter assays would be possible.

Methods

We used site directed mutagenesis to produce these specific mutations. pSB1C3 with the luciferase and LRE genes is a sizeable plasmid so we performed two separate PCR reactions to generate two halves of the plasmid (using oligonucleotides with the point mutation). PCR products were run on an agarose gel and the relevant bands gel extracted then joined by Gibson Assembly. Cells were transformed with the product. This method avoids cells being transformed with the non-mutated, template plasmid. As an additional check colonies which grew from successfully transformed cells were imaged inside a dark box after addition of luciferin to check the colour of the light produced was as expected.

Results

We produced...