Goat Polyclonal Antibody to mCherry Cat# GPCA-mCherry

      The mCherry protein is engineered from a fluorescent protein originally isolated from a coral and is widely used as a tracer in transfection and transgenic experiments. The prototype for these fluorescent proteins is Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), which is a ~27kDa protein isolated originally from the jellyfish Aequoria victoria. GFP was the basis of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien, specifically “for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP”. The mCherry protein is derived from DsRed, a red fluorescent protein related to GFP isolated from disc corals of the genus Discosoma. DsRed is similar in size and properties to GFP, but, obviously, produces a red rather than a green fluorochrome. The original DsRed was engineered extensively in the Tsien lab to prevent it from forming tetramers and dimers and to modify and improve the spectral properties (1-3). Several further cycles of mutation, directed modification and evolutionary selection produced mCherry, which has an excitation maximum at 587nm and and emission maximum at 610nm (4).Several further cycles of mutation, directed modification and evolutionary selection produced mCherry, which has an excitation maximum at 587nm and and emission maximum at 610nm (4). The same lab engineered other fluorescent DsRed derivatives such as tdTomato, mOrange, mStrawberry and others. This antibody likely binds all these variants and is known to bind tdTomato.

Chromogenic immunostaining of a formalin fixed paraffin embedded section of mouse brain transduced with a TdTomato construct under an oxytocin promoter. Staining with goat pAb to mCherry, GPCA-mCherry, dilution 1:10,000 detected with DAB (brown) using the Vector Elite ABC-HRP detection and reagents with citra buffer retrieval. Hematoxylin (blue) was used as the counterstain. GPCA-mCherry specifically detected the soma and axons of oxytocin positive neurons in the hypothalamus. The TdTomato protein is very similar in sequence to mCherry so that our antibody strongly recognizes both proteins. Mouse select image for larger view.

This antibody was made against a recombinant construct expressed in and purified from E. coli. The sequence is identical to that found in a series of widely used expression vectors and is identical to Uniprot entry D1MPT3.


  1 MVSKGEEDNM AIIKEFMRFK VHMEGSVNGH EFEIEGEGEG RPYEGTQTAK
 51 LKVTKGGPLP FAWDILSPQF MYGSKAYVKH PADIPDYLKL SFPEGFKWER
101 VMNFEDGGVV TVTQDSSLQD GEFIYKVKLR GTNFPSDGPV MQKKTMGWEA
151 SSERMYPEDG ALKGEIKQRL KLKDGGHYDA EVKTTYKAKK PVQLPGAYNV
201 NIKLDITSHN EDYTIVEQYE RAEGRHSTGG MDELYK

1. Baird GS, Zacharias DA, Tsien RY. Biochemistry, mutagenesis, and oligomerization of DsRed, a red fluorescent protein from coral. PNAS 97:11984-9 (2000).
2. Gross LA, et al. The structure of the chromophore within DsRed, a red fluorescent protein from coral. PNAS 97:11990-5 (2000).
3. Heikal AA, et al. Molecular spectroscopy and dynamics of intrinsically fluorescent proteins: coral red (dsRed) and yellow (Citrine). PNAS 97:11996-2001 (2000).
4. Shaner NC, et al. Improved monomeric red, orange and yellow fluorescent proteins derived from Discosoma sp. red fluorescent protein. Nat. Biotech. 22:1567-72 (2004).