Dennis’ work on the behaviour of fluorescent proteins (FPs) in baker’s yeast has been published! With the help of Daan de Groot and Phillipp Schmidt, a variety of fluorescent proteins were characterised for various properties, including brightness, photobleaching, photochromism, day-to-day variation and monomerism. Many FPs showed different performance in yeast compared to previous characterisations done in vitro, in bacteria or in mammalian cells.  To improve expression of good performing FPs in yeast, Dennis codon optimized them. Surprisingly, codon-optimization affected the FP traits, either positively or negatively. Still, this new set of FPs outperforms conventional FPs, with improved experimental signal readout, opening new experimental possibilities.

You can find the open access article here.