Designing split reporter proteins for analytical tools

A current focus of biological research is to quantify and image cellular processes in living cells and animals. To detect such cellular processes, genetically-encoded reporters have been extensively used. The most common reporters include firefly luciferase, renilla luciferase, green fluorescent protein (GFP) and its variants with various spectral properties. This review describes novel design of split-GFP and luciferase reporters based on protein splicing, and highlights some potential applications with the reporters to study protein–protein interactions, protein localization, intracellular protein dynamics, and protein activity in living cells and animals.