mCherry-XL: brigther, more stable and with better spectra!

mCherry is a very popular red fluorescent protein. However it has several disadvantages:

  • It is shifted towards far red (ex peak 585 nm) so it often is not imaged optimally with the illumination sources and filters commonly available.
  • It bleaches fast

mCherry has now been evolved into mCherry-XL with several improvements:

  • This variant is shifted back towards green (ex peak 560 nm) therefore being very well excited with popular 561nm lasers.
  • It is 3 times brighter than mCherry
  • There is also a clear improvement in the lifetime for FLIM
  • Together the 2 points above means that less excitation power is required so it should help with the bleaching problem

Here is the paper. Therefore you should consider mCherry-XL for your future tagging with red fluorescence proteins.

Leave a Reply

Follow us! :-)

Type your email address below to subscribe to our blog!