Combinatorial marking of cells and cell structures with reconstituted fluorescent proteins

摘要

The present invention relates to the use of split fluorescent proteins to determine whether promoters are coordinately active, whereby the transcriptional expression of incomplete portions of a fluorescent protein is controlled by different promoters and coordinate (not necessarily contemporaneous) promoter activity results in the reconstitution of a fluorescent protein. The present invention, in non-limiting embodiments, may be used to selectively label cells and cell structures in vivo and to demonstrate changes in promoter activity (for example, in developmental biology and drug discovery applications).