Part:BBa_K3814004
free-use GFP (fuGFP)
fuGFP, short for ‘free-use GFP’, is a patent-free GFP developed by Research Associate Mark Somerville and Associate Professor Nick Coleman in the Coleman Lab (Coleman & Somerville, 2019).
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!
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:
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
- 10COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[10]
- 12COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[12]
- 21COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[21]
- 23COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[23]
- 25INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[25]Illegal AgeI site found at 151
- 1000COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[1000]
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