2026-03-23 オークリッジ国立研究所（ORNL）
A fungal cell emits chemical signals that are detected by a biosensor-equipped plant cell, triggering a visible fluorescent readout. Credit: Philip Gray, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy.
＜関連情報＞
- https://www.ornl.gov/news/biosensor-detects-early-fungal-outbreaks-advances-plant-biotechnology
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pbi.70523
スプリットインテインタンパク質を用いた植物における低分子バイオセンサーの設計
Use of Split-Intein Proteins to Design a Small Molecule Biosensor in Plants
Brandon A. Boone, Bal Maharjan, Van C. Nguyen, Jerry M. Parks, Tomás A. Rush, Carrie A. Eckert, Jin-Gui Chen, Paul E. Abraham, Xiaohan Yang
Plant Biotechnology Journal Published:31 December 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.70523
Understanding how plants perceive their environment is fundamental to advancing agricultural productivity and sustainability. Many biological small molecules, including those involved in microbial recognition, act rapidly at the plant cell surface, but the absence of tools to visualise these dynamics has limited our ability to dissect plant–microbe communication. To address this gap, we sought to create a genetically encoded biosensor that couples ligand-induced protein dimerization with the production of a fluorescent reporter. Inteins are peptide regions that excise themselves from precursor proteins and ligate the flanking chains (exteins). When each half of a split intein is fused to one of two dimerizing proteins, ligand binding brings them into proximity, inducing intein splicing and ligation of flanking extein sequences (Kang et al. 2022). Similar to previous studies, we split the yeast vacuolar ATPase subunit 1 (VMA1) intein, creating a protein biosensor that produces eGFP upon protein dimerization after ligand binding (Figure 1A) (Mootz et al. 2003). Specifically, eGFP halves (i.e., non-functional N- and C-terminal GFP fragments) were fused to the intein halves, resulting in two fusion proteins: N-terminal GFP::N-terminal intein and C-terminal intein::C-terminal GFP (Figure 1A).
