Difference between revisions of "Part:BBa K3814004"

Revision as of 04:36, 14 June 2022

free-use GFP (fuGFP)

fuGFP, short for ‘free-use GFP’, is an open source GFP developed by Mark Somerville and Nick Coleman at the University of Sydney. The rationale for developing this GFP variant was to make a superfolding GFP (sfGFP) that was not protected by patents (unlike the original sfGFP), thus facilitating all kinds of synbio research, whether or not this has commercial intent. The mechanism for moving the GFP off-patent was to use DNA shuffling to derive a synthetic gene encoding a protein with <80% amino acid identity to sfGFP, since the patent claims everything at >80% identity. fuGFP preferentially absorbs long-wave UV light and emits green. Note that this is different to sfGFP, which has an S65T mutation that makes it absorb more blue light.

Figure 1. Expression of fuGFP in E.coli strain TOP10.

References

Coleman, N., & Somerville, M. (2019, May). The Story of Free Use GFP (fuGFP). Small Things Considered. https://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2019/05/the-story-of-free-use-gfp-fugfp.html

Sequence and Features

Assembly Compatibility:

10
COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[10]
12
COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[12]
21
COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[21]
23
COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[23]
25
INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[25]
Illegal AgeI site found at 151
1000
COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[1000]

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 <partinfo>BBa_K3814004 short</partinfo>
-fuGFP, short for ‘free-use GFP’, is an open source GFP developed by Mark Somerville and Nick Coleman at the University of Sydney. Current GFPs like superfolding GFP (sfGFP) are protected IP and patented. This can make any commercial or even academic use of them expensive, and a barrier to research. Reading through the patents of GFPs, it was realised that if a GFP could be made with less than 80% homology to currently patented GFPs, it would escape patent protection!
+fuGFP, short for ‘free-use GFP’, is an open source GFP developed by Mark Somerville and Nick Coleman at the University of Sydney. The rationale for developing this GFP variant was to make a superfolding GFP (sfGFP) that was not protected by patents (unlike the original sfGFP), thus facilitating all kinds of synbio research, whether or not this has commercial intent. The mechanism for moving the GFP off-patent was to use DNA shuffling to derive a synthetic gene encoding a protein with <80% amino acid identity to sfGFP, since the patent claims everything at >80% identity. fuGFP preferentially absorbs long-wave UV light and emits green. Note that this is different to sfGFP, which has an S65T mutation that makes it absorb more blue light.
-So off they worked, and eventually they came to a product that had “76% amino acid identity to GFPmut3”, well below the 80% goal! See below its fluorescence:
 [[File:T--Sydney_Australia--fugfp.png|500x500px|Caption]]