How to design a chalk talk-the million dollar sales pitch.

Each faculty recruiting season, many postdocs ask, "What is a chalk talk?" The chalk talk is many things-a sales pitch, a teaching demonstration, a barrage of questions, and a description of a future research program. The chalk talk is arguably the most important component of a faculty search interview. Yet few postdocs or grad students receive training or practice in giving a chalk talk. In the following essay, I'll cover the basics of chalk talk design and preparation.

moxMaple3: a Photoswitchable Fluorescent Protein for PALM and Protein Highlighting in Oxidizing Cellular Environments.

The ability of fluorescent proteins (FPs) to fold robustly is fundamental to the autocatalytic formation of the chromophore. While the importance of the tertiary protein structure is well appreciated, the impact of individual amino acid mutations for FPs is often not intuitive and requires direct testing. In this study, we describe the engineering of a monomeric photoswitchable FP, moxMaple3, for use in oxidizing cellular environments, especially the eukaryotic secretory pathway. Surprisingly, a point mutation to replace a cysteine substantially improved the yield of correctly folded FP capable of chromophore formation, regardless of cellular environment. The improved folding of moxMaple3 increases the fraction of visibly tagged fusion proteins, as well as FP performance in PALM super-resolution microscopy, and thus makes moxMaple3 a robust monomeric FP choice for PALM and optical highlighting applications.

The Development and Enhancement of FRAP as a Key Tool for Investigating Protein Dynamics.

The saga of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) illustrates how disparate technical developments impact science. Starting with the classic 1976 Axelrod et al. work in Biophysical Journal, FRAP (originally fluorescence photobleaching recovery) opened the door to extraction of quantitative information from photobleaching experiments, laying the experimental and theoretical groundwork for quantifying both the mobility and the mobile fraction of a labeled population of proteins. Over the ensuing years, FRAP's reach dramatically expanded, with new developments in GFP technology and turn-key confocal microscopy, which enabled measurement of protein diffusion and binding/dissociation rates in virtually every compartment within the cell. The FRAP technique and data catalyzed an exchange of ideas between biophysicists studying membrane dynamics, cell biologists focused on intracellular dynamics, and systems biologists modeling the dynamics of cell activity. The outcome transformed the field of cellular biology, leading to a fundamental rethinking of long-held theories of cellular dynamism. Here, we review the pivotal FRAP studies that made these developments and conceptual changes possible, which gave rise to current models of complex cell dynamics.

Structure and topology around the cleavage site regulate post-translational cleavage of the HIV-1 gp160 signal peptide.

Like all other secretory proteins, the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein gp160 is targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) by its signal peptide during synthesis. Proper gp160 folding in the ER requires core glycosylation, disulfide-bond formation and proline isomerization. Signal-peptide cleavage occurs only late after gp160 chain termination and is dependent on folding of the soluble subunit gp120 to a near-native conformation. We here detail the mechanism by which co-translational signal-peptide cleavage is prevented. Conserved residues from the signal peptide and residues downstream of the canonical cleavage site form an extended alpha-helix in the ER membrane, which covers the cleavage site, thus preventing cleavage. A point mutation in the signal peptide breaks the alpha helix allowing co-translational cleavage. We demonstrate that postponed cleavage of gp160 enhances functional folding of the molecule. The change to early cleavage results in decreased viral fitness compared to wild-type HIV.

moxDendra2: an inert photoswitchable protein for oxidizing environments.

Fluorescent proteins (FPs) that can be optically highlighted enable PALM super-resolution microscopy and pulse-chase experiments of cellular molecules. Most FPs evolved in cytoplasmic environments either in the original source organism or in the cytoplasm of bacteria during the course of optimization for research applications. Consequently, many FPs may fold incorrectly in the chemically distinct environments in subcellular organelles. Here, we describe the first monomeric photoswitchable (from green to bright red) FP adapted for oxidizing environments.

Connexin Type and Fluorescent Protein Fusion Tag Determine Structural Stability of Gap Junction Plaques.

Gap junctions (GJs) are made up of plaques of laterally clustered intercellular channels and the membranes in which the channels are embedded. Arrangement of channels within a plaque determines subcellular distribution of connexin binding partners and sites of intercellular signaling. Here, we report the discovery that some connexin types form plaque structures with strikingly different degrees of fluidity in the arrangement of the GJ channel subcomponents of the GJ plaque. We uncovered this property of GJs by applying fluorescence recovery after photobleaching to GJs formed from connexins fused with fluorescent protein tags. We found that connexin 26 (Cx26) and Cx30 GJs readily diffuse within the plaque structures, whereas Cx43 GJs remain persistently immobile for more than 2 min after bleaching. The cytoplasmic C terminus of Cx43 was required for stability of Cx43 plaque arrangement. We provide evidence that these qualitative differences in GJ arrangement stability reflect endogenous characteristics, with the caveat that the sizes of the GJs examined were necessarily large for these measurements. We also uncovered an unrecognized effect of non-monomerized fluorescent protein on the dynamically arranged GJs and the organization of plaques composed of multiple connexin types. Together, these findings redefine our understanding of the GJ plaque structure and should be considered in future studies using fluorescent protein tags to probe dynamics of highly ordered protein complexes.

A sphingolipid-dependent diffusion barrier confines ER stress to the yeast mother cell.

In many cell types, lateral diffusion barriers compartmentalize the plasma membrane and, at least in budding yeast, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). However, the molecular nature of these barriers, their mode of action and their cellular functions are unclear. Here, we show that misfolded proteins of the ER remain confined into the mother compartment of budding yeast cells. Confinement required the formation of a lateral diffusion barrier in the form of a distinct domain of the ER-membrane at the bud neck, in a septin-, Bud1 GTPase- and sphingolipid-dependent manner. The sphingolipids, but not Bud1, also contributed to barrier formation in the outer membrane of the dividing nucleus. Barrier-dependent confinement of ER stress into the mother cell promoted aging. Together, our data clarify the physical nature of lateral diffusion barriers in the ER and establish the role of such barriers in the asymmetric segregation of proteotoxic misfolded proteins during cell division and aging.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01883.001.

Imaging the alphavirus exit pathway.

UNLABELLED: Alphaviruses are small enveloped RNA viruses with highly organized structures that exclude host cell proteins. They contain an internal nucleocapsid and an external lattice of the viral E2 and E1 transmembrane proteins. Alphaviruses bud from the plasma membrane (PM), but the process and dynamics of alphavirus assembly and budding are poorly understood. Here we generated Sindbis viruses (SINVs) with fluorescent protein labels on the E2 envelope protein and exploited them to characterize virus assembly and budding in living cells. During virus infection, E2 became enriched in localized patches on the PM and in filopodium-like extensions. These E2-labeled patches and extensions contained all of the viral structural proteins. Correlative light and electron microscopy studies established that the patches and extensions colocalized with virus budding structures, while light microscopy showed that they excluded a freely diffusing PM marker protein. Exclusion required the interaction of the E2 protein with the capsid protein, a critical step in virus budding, and was associated with the immobilization of the envelope proteins on the cell surface. Virus infection induced two distinct types of extensions: tubulin-negative extensions that were ∼2 to 4 µm in length and excluded the PM marker, and tubulin-positive extensions that were >10 µm long, contained the PM marker, and could transfer virus particles to noninfected cells. Tubulin-positive extensions were selectively reduced in cells infected with a nonbudding SINV mutant. Together, our data support a model in which alphavirus infection induces reorganization of the PM and cytoskeleton, leading to virus budding from specialized sites. IMPORTANCE: Alphaviruses are important and widely distributed human pathogens for which vaccines and antiviral therapies are urgently needed. These small highly organized viruses bud from the host cell PM. Virus assembly and budding are critical but little understood steps in the alphavirus life cycle. We developed alphaviruses with fluorescent protein tags on one of the viral membrane (envelope) proteins and used a variety of microscopy techniques to follow the envelope protein and a host cell PM protein during budding. We showed that alphavirus infection induced the formation of patches and extensions on the PM where the envelope proteins accumulate. These sites excluded other PM proteins and correlated with virus budding structures. Exclusion of PM proteins required specific interactions of the viral envelope proteins with the internal capsid protein. Together, our data indicate that alphaviruses extensively reorganize the cell surface and cytoskeleton to promote their assembly and budding.

Photobleaching methods to study Golgi complex dynamics in living cells.

The Golgi complex (GC) is a highly dynamic organelle that constantly receives and exports proteins and lipids from both the endoplasmic reticulum and the plasma membrane. While protein trafficking can be monitored with traditional biochemical methods, these approaches average the behaviors of millions of cells, provide modest temporal information and no spatial information. Photobleaching methods enable investigators to monitor protein trafficking in single cells or even single GC stacks with subsecond precision. Furthermore, photobleaching can be exploited to monitor the behaviors of resident GC proteins to provide insight into mechanisms of retention and trafficking. In this chapter, general photobleaching approaches with laser scanning confocal microscopes are described. Importantly, the problems associated with many fluorescent proteins (FPs) and their uses in the secretory pathway are discussed and appropriate choices are suggested. For example, Enhanced Green Fluorescent Protein (EGFP) and most red FPs are extremely problematic. Finally, options for data analyses are described.

Fluorescent proteins in cellular organelles: serious pitfalls and some solutions.

Fluorescent proteins (FPs) have been powerful tools for cell biologists for over 15 years. The large variety of FPs available rarely comes with an instruction manual or a warning label. The potential pitfalls of the use of FPs in cellular organelles represent a significant concern for investigators. FPs generally did not evolve in the often distinctive physicochemical environments of subcellular organelles. In organelles, FPs can misfold, go dark, and even distort organelle morphology. In this minireview, we describe the issues associated with FPs in organelles and provide solutions to enable investigators to better exploit FP technology in cells.

Detecting soluble polyQ oligomers and investigating their impact on living cells using split-GFP.

Aberrant expansion of the number of polyglutamine (polyQ) repeats in mutant proteins is the hallmark of various diseases. These pathologies include Huntington's disease (HD), a neurological disorder caused by expanded polyQ stretch within the huntingtin (Htt) protein. The expansions increase the propensity of the Htt protein to oligomerize. In the cytoplasm of living cells, the mutant form of Htt (mHtt) is present as soluble monomers and oligomers as well as insoluble aggregates termed inclusion bodies (IBs). Detecting and assessing the relative toxicity of these various forms of mHtt has proven difficult. To enable direct visualization of mHtt soluble oligomers in living cells, we established a split superfolder green fluorescent protein (sfGFP) complementation assay. In this assay, exon 1 variants of Htt (Htt(ex1)) containing non-pathological or HD-associated polyQ lengths were fused to two different nonfluorescent fragments of sfGFP. If the Htt proteins oligomerize and the sfGFP fragments come into close proximity, they can associate and complement each other to form a complete and fluorescent sfGFP reporter. Importantly, the irreversible nature of the split-sfGFP complementation allowed us to trap otherwise transient interactions and artificially increase mHtt oligomerization. When coupled with a fluorescent apoptosis reporter, this assay can correlate soluble mHtt oligomer levels and cell death leading to a better characterization of the toxic potential of various forms of mHtt in living cells.

Assessing the tendency of fluorescent proteins to oligomerize under physiologic conditions.

Several fluorescent proteins (FPs) are prone to forming low-affinity oligomers. This undesirable tendency is exacerbated when FPs are confined to membranes or when fused to naturally oligomeric proteins. Oligomerization of FPs limits their suitability for creating fusions with proteins of interest. Unfortunately, no standardized method evaluates the biologically relevant oligomeric state of FPs. Here, we describe a quantitative visual assay for assessing whether FPs are sufficiently monomeric under physiologic conditions. Membrane-associated FP-fusion proteins, by virtue of their constrained planar geometry, achieve high effective concentrations. We exploited this propensity to develop an assay to measure FP tendencies to oligomerize in cells. FPs were fused on the cytoplasmic end of an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) signal-anchor membrane protein (CytERM) and expressed in cells. Cells were scored based on the ability of CytERM to homo-oligomerize with proteins on apposing membranes and restructure the ER from a tubular network into organized smooth ER (OSER) whorl structures. The ratio of nuclear envelope and OSER structures mean fluorescent intensities for cells expressing enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) or monomeric green fluorescent protein (mGFP) CytERM established standards for comparison of uncharacterized FPs. We tested three FPs and identified two as sufficiently monomeric, while a third previously reported as monomeric was found to strongly oligomerize.

Imaging of membrane systems and membrane traffic in living cells.

Eukaryotic cells are composed of an intricate system of internal membranes that are organized into different compartments--including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the nuclear envelope, the Golgi complex (GC), lysosomes, endosomes, caveolae, mitochondria, and peroxisomes--that perform specialized tasks within the cell. The localization and dynamics of intracellular compartments are now being studied in living cells because of the availability of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-fusion proteins and recent advances in fluorescent microscope imaging systems. Results using these techniques are revealing how intracellular compartments maintain their steady-state organization and distributions, how they undergo growth and division, and how they transfer protein and lipid components between themselves through the formation and trafficking of membrane transport intermediates. This article describes methods using GFP-fusion proteins to visualize the behavior of organelles and to track membrane-bound transport intermediates moving between them. Practical issues related to the construction and expression of GFP-fusion proteins are discussed first. These are essential for optimizing the brightness and expression levels of GFP-fusion proteins so that intracellular membrane-bound structures containing these fusion proteins can be readily visualized. Next, techniques for performing time-lapse imaging using a confocal laser-scanning microscope (CLSM) are detailed, including the use of photobleaching to highlight organelles and transport intermediates. Methods for the acquisition and analysis of data are then discussed. Finally, commonly used and exciting new approaches for perturbing membrane traffic are outlined.

Time-lapse imaging of membrane traffic in living cells.

Eukaryotic cells are composed of an intricate system of internal membranes that are organized into different compartments--including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the nuclear envelope, the Golgi complex (GC), lysosomes, endosomes, caveolae, mitochondria, and peroxisomes--that perform specialized tasks within the cell. The localization and dynamics of intracellular compartments are now being studied in living cells because of the availability of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-fusion proteins and recent advances in fluorescent microscope imaging systems. This protocol describes the use of the confocal laser-scanning microscope (CLSM) for time-lapse imaging of one or more fluorescent markers.

Photobleaching regions of living cells to monitor membrane traffic.

Eukaryotic cells are composed of an intricate system of internal membranes that are organized into different compartments--including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the nuclear envelope, the Golgi complex (GC), lysosomes, endosomes, caveolae, mitochondria, and peroxisomes--that perform specialized tasks within the cell. The localization and dynamics of intracellular compartments are now being studied in living cells because of the availability of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-fusion proteins and recent advances in fluorescent microscope imaging systems. This protocol outlines two methods for photobleaching living cells to monitor membrane traffic. The first method involves selective photobleaching using a confocal laser-scanning microscope (CLSM) that can bleach discrete selected regions of interest. As outlined in the second method, photobleaching can also be performed with older CLSMs that lack the capacity for selective photobleaching. In this case, photobleaching is accomplished by zooming into a small region of the cell and scanning with full laser power.

Activating photoactivatable proteins with laser light to visualize membrane systems and membrane traffic in living cells.

Eukaryotic cells are composed of an intricate system of internal membranes that are organized into different compartments--including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the nuclear envelope, the Golgi complex (GC), lysosomes, endosomes, caveolae, mitochondria, and peroxisomes--that perform specialized tasks within the cell. The localization and dynamics of intracellular compartments are now being studied in living cells because of the availability of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-fusion proteins and recent advances in fluorescent microscope imaging systems, such as the confocal laser-scanning microscope (CLSM). This protocol describes the steps for activating one of the first photoactivatable proteins, PA-GFP.

BiP availability distinguishes states of homeostasis and stress in the endoplasmic reticulum of living cells.

Accumulation of misfolded secretory proteins causes cellular stress and induces the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress pathway, the unfolded protein response (UPR). Although the UPR has been extensively studied, little is known about the molecular changes that distinguish the homeostatic and stressed ER. The increase in levels of misfolded proteins and formation of complexes with chaperones during ER stress are predicted to further crowd the already crowded ER lumen. Surprisingly, using live cell fluorescence microscopy and an inert ER reporter, we find the crowdedness of stressed ER, treated acutely with tunicamycin or DTT, either is comparable to homeostasis or significantly decreases in multiple cell types. In contrast, photobleaching experiments revealed a GFP-tagged variant of the ER chaperone BiP rapidly undergoes a reversible quantitative decrease in diffusion as misfolded proteins accumulate. BiP mobility is sensitive to exceptionally low levels of misfolded protein stressors and can detect intermediate states of BiP availability. Decreased BiP availability temporally correlates with UPR markers, but restoration of BiP availability correlates less well. Thus, BiP availability represents a novel and powerful tool for reporting global secretory protein misfolding levels and investigating the molecular events of ER stress in single cells, independent of traditional UPR markers.

Formation and toxicity of soluble polyglutamine oligomers in living cells.

BACKGROUND: Aggregation and cytotoxicity of mutant proteins containing an expanded number of polyglutamine (polyQ) repeats is a hallmark of several diseases, including Huntington's disease (HD). Within cells, mutant Huntingtin (mHtt) and other polyglutamine expansion mutant proteins exist as monomers, soluble oligomers, and insoluble inclusion bodies (IBs). Determining which of these forms constitute a toxic species has proven difficult. Recent studies support a role for IBs as a cellular coping mechanism to sequester levels of potentially toxic soluble monomeric and oligomeric species of mHtt. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: When fused to a fluorescent reporter (GFP) and expressed in cells, the soluble monomeric and oligomeric polyglutamine species are visually indistinguishable. Here, we describe two complementary biophysical fluorescence microscopy techniques to directly detect soluble polyglutamine oligomers (using Htt exon 1 or Htt(ex1)) and monitor their fates in live cells. Photobleaching analyses revealed a significant reduction in the mobilities of mHtt(ex1) variants consistent with their incorporation into soluble microcomplexes. Similarly, when fused to split-GFP constructs, both wildtype and mHtt(ex1) formed oligomers, as evidenced by the formation of a fluorescent reporter. Only the mHtt(ex1) split-GFP oligomers assembled into IBs. Both FRAP and split-GFP approaches confirmed the ability of mHtt(ex1) to bind and incorporate wildtype Htt into soluble oligomers. We exploited the irreversible binding of split-GFP fragments to forcibly increase levels of soluble oligomeric mHtt(ex1). A corresponding increase in the rate of IBs formation and the number formed was observed. Importantly, higher levels of soluble mHtt(ex1) oligomers significantly correlated with increased mutant cytotoxicity, independent of the presence of IBs. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our study describes powerful and sensitive tools for investigating soluble oligomeric forms of expanded polyglutamine proteins, and their impact on cell viability. Moreover, these methods should be applicable for the detection of soluble oligomers of a wide variety of aggregation prone proteins.

Fluorescent proteins: a cell biologist's user guide.

Fluorescent Proteins (FPs) have revolutionized cell biology. The value of labeling and visualizing proteins in living cells is evident from the thousands of publications since the cloning of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). Biologists have been flooded with a cornucopia of FPs; however, the FP toolbox has not necessarily been optimized for cell biologists. Common FP plasmids are suboptimal for the construction of proteins fused to FP. More problematic are commercial and investigator-constructed FP-fusion proteins that disrupt important cellular targeting information. Even when cell biologists correctly construct FP-fusion proteins, it is rarely self-evident which FP should be used. Important FP information, such as oligomer formation or photostability, is often obscure or anecdotal. This brief guide is offered to assist the biologist to exploit FPs in the analysis of cellular processes.