Engineering luciferases for assays and imaging

Abstract

Luciferases have served a number of purposes in biomedical applications, including within reporter gene and split reporter complementation assays. These proteins, however, have not evolved for the purpose of biomedical research, and it is not surprising that the utility and robustness of these assays can be improved by protein engineering of the luciferase. In this chapter, we provide an overview of luciferases, protein engineering, and how protein engineering is applied to luciferases.