Detection of Protein Interactions in All Bacterial Components by Förster Resonance Energy Transfer with the Superfolder mTurquoise2 ox-mNeongreen FRET Pair.

This protocol was developed to qualitatively and quantitatively detect protein-protein interactions in all compartments of by Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) using the Superfolder mTurquoise2 ox-mNeonGreen FRET pair (sfTq2-mNG). This FRET pair has more than twice the detection range for FRET interaction studies in the cytoplasm or periplasm of compared to other pairs to date. These protein-interaction studies can be performed because fluorescent proteins can be genetically encoded as fusions to proteins of interest and expressed in the cell. sfTq2 and mNG fluorescent protein fusions are co-expressed in bacterial cells and the fluorescence emission spectra are measured. By also measuring reference spectra for the background, sfTq2-only and mNG-only samples, expected emission spectra can be calculated. Sensitized emission for mNG above the expected spectrum can be attributed to FRET and quantified by spectral unmixing. This bio-protocol discusses the sfTq2-mNG FRET pair and provides a practical guide in preparing the protein fusions, setting up and running the FRET experiments, measuring fluorescence spectra and gives the tools to analyze the collected data.