Anyone know of free-use Fluorescent proteins? - (Oct/24/2005 )
So our lab is trying to create a GFP-type vector to use in an assay we are trying to develop. However, since GFP and other fluorescent proteins I know of are patented, we could never really hope to market such an assay without having to do a bunch of legal stuff. Anyone know of a good marker that has been released for public use without legal restrictions? 
What are you using it in? E. coli or another organism (eukaryote)?
There is a ton of free GFP out there if you know whom to ask.
-Matt
Didn't Clontech's rights to GFP expire a few years ago?
Correct me if I'm wrong...I mean, I'm publishing GFP stuff without going through any of this "legal rights" stuff.
-Matt
MisticMatt, I don't know if the rights expired, my belief was that they had not but I could be wrong. We plan to use this not just for our own research but also in an assay that we would use to offer services to other labs so perhaps the making-money aspect changes things. Where does your lab find GFP that is not under legal restriction?
Oh btw, to answer the question of host, we plan to use it in both.
hi,
label your protein with a biotin, it's free
Seb_
Good suggestion Tryptofan. Our experiments however requires us to use some form of marker to easily identify our strain of bacteria's location. Use of GFP or luciferases seem to be restricted for for-profit orgs. We don't need to simply label a protein but rather the entire cell.
So you want the bacteria to luminesce? If you clone the lux operon (8.6 kb) into a plasmid, the resulting colony will luminesce in the dark. Message someone from Greenberg's lab at the University of Iowa about pHV200, which contains the lux operon in the Sal I site of pBR322...I'm still confused as to what you are trying to do...doesn't B-gal do this for screening procedures, too? It doesn't seem like it's something you can make a lot of money off of because of the FREE alternatives.
My lab is the Structural Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute...I've acquired plasmids containing GFPmut1 and iCFP/iYFP from www.bgsc.org . I am currently involved in a project that involves dual-labelling of membrane proteins.
-Matt
Ah, my old lab had obtained some arabidopsis knockout lines from your institute, fun! But, aren't all known forms of luciferase currently patented?
This sounds like a job for super laywer! I have seen talks recently about people describing new fluorescent proteins isolated from corals, although I bet they have patient rights on these also. Does anyone actually know the story about why clontech stopped selling the GFP vectors?