Illumination for apoptosis: Firefly luciferase connected with a substrate sequence for caspase-3 (DEVD) is cyclized by an intein DnaE. When the cyclic luciferase is expressed in living cells, its activity is greatly decreased because of a steric effect. Activated caspase-3 cleaves the substrate sequence in the cyclic luciferase and the luciferase activity is restored. Quantitative sensing of time-dependent caspase-3 activity in living cells and mice upon extracellular stimuli has been demonstrated (see images).
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Kanno et al. (2007) studied this question.
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