Fluorescent proteins are often used as bright and stable lightbulbs. By moving the termini close to the chromophore, FPs can be turned into sensors.
One of the most spectacular applications is the sensing of calcium in complete organisms, as shown in this movie, where calcium is detected as a proxy for neuronal activity in zebrafish
nature.com/articles/nmeth…
nature.com/articles/nmeth…
However, it is very hard to relate the intensity changes to calcium concentrations. To solve this, we have generated a sensor based on mTurquoise2 that detects calcium and reports with a fluorescence lifetime change.
After careful calibration, the fluorescence lifetime can be used to measure absolute calcium concentrations. Here's an example of calcium measurements in an organoid.
We think that the sensor can be used as template for lifetime based sensing of other molecules. Read more about the engineering and applications in this preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
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