Esther Ivorra-Molla, Dipayan Akhuli, Martin B. L. McAndrew, William Scott, Lokesh Kumar, Saravanan Palani, Masanori Mishima, Allister Crow & Mohan K. Balasubramanian

StayGold is an exceptionally bright and stable fluorescent protein that is highly resistant to photobleaching. Despite favorable fluorescence properties, use of StayGold as a fluorescent tag is limited because it forms a natural dimer. Here we report the 1.6 Å structure of StayGold and generate a derivative, mStayGold, that retains the brightness and photostability of the original protein while being fully monomeric.

Nature Biotechnology. December 2023