The energy from the donor AcGFP1 protein is transferred to the acceptor mCherry, resulting in high fluorescence of mCherry even if the FRET protein pair is excited with light in the range of the excitation spectrum of AcGFP1. When the polypeptide link between the fluorescent proteins is cleaved, energy transfer is interrupted and fluorescence emission of the acceptor protein decreases. The advantage of FRET over BRET for in vivo detection of HIV protease activity is that no additional substrate is needed to measure the portion of the FRET sensor that is degraded; FRET is also applicable for spatial imaging in a single cell using microscopy.The purpose of the current work is to develop rapid, high-throughput, noninvasive methods for measuring HIV protease activity and screening for protease inhibitors.

In this paper, we describe methods for monitoring protease activity on the basis of a novel transgenic FRET-HIV protease-sensitive sensor based on a mCerulean and mCitrine FRET pair. The FRET efficiency of the sensor was analyzed using fluorescent spectroscopy, ratiometric flow cytometry, and confocal microscopy. We assessed the functionality of the FRET sensor in in vitro studies with a recombinant HIV protease and in in vivo studies of HIV protease activity within cells transfected with an HIV pseudoviral genome. In addition, we describe novel applications of the FRET-HIV sensor for studies of intracellular HIV protease activity. Using flow cytometry, we measured the percentage of the HIV pseudovirus-containing cells with intracellular HIV protease activity in a high-throughput manner.

Such information could be important when studying the factors involved in the process of HIV dormancy inside the infected cells. In addition, the confocal microscopy sensitized emission FRET technique complemented the flow cytometry results, enabling imaging of protease activity within the cell. Our results demonstrate that the methods effectively detected and quantified the HIV protease activity of subpopulations and can therefore be used for scanning for potential inhibitors.2.?Experimental Section2.1. Cloning of the FRET-HIV Protease Sensor and other PlasmidsThe yellow fluorescent protein mCitrine (mCit) was polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplified from plasmid pRSET-B-mCitrine using forward primer (5��-CATGTCTAGAGCCGGCGTGAGCAAGGG CGAGGAGC) and reverse primer (5��-CATCTGCAGTTACTACTTGTACAGCTCGTCCATGCCG).

The PCR product was cut with XbaI and PstI restriction enzymes and ligated into equally cut plasmid BBa_I712015 (Registry of Standard Biological Parts) containing the HIV protease cleavage site with the amino acid sequence SQVSQNY��PIVQNLQ. This sequence is also called Dacomitinib the p17/p24 peptide [12], which is used in commercial synthetic HIV Protease Substrate 1 [sequence RE-(EDANS)- SQNY��PIVQK-(DABCYL)-R] (H6660-1MG, Sigma, St.