Developing a circularly permuted variant of Renilla luciferase as a bioluminescent sensor for measuring Caspase-9 activity in the cell-free and cell-based systems

Highlights: • A luciferase based biosensor for measuring caspase-9 activity has been constructed using circular permutation strategy. • The designed biosensor detects the caspase-9 activity in a cell-free coupled assay system. • The designed biosensor can be implemented as a cell-based biosensor to detect cellular caspase-9 activity and apoptosis. Biosensors and whole cell biosensors consisting of biological molecules and living cells can sense a special stimulus on a living system and convert it to a measurable signal. A major group of them are the bioluminescent sensors derived from luciferases. This type of biosensors has a broad application in molecular biology and imaging systems. In this project, a luciferase-based biosensor for detecting and measuring caspase-9 activity is designed and constructed using the circular permutation strategy. The spectroscopic method results reveal changes in the biosensor structure. Additionally, its activity is examined in a cell-free coupled assay system. Afterward, the biosensor is utilized for measuring the cellular caspase-9 activity upon apoptosis induction in a cancer cell line. In following the gene of biosensor is sub-cloned into a eukaryotic vector and transfected to HEK293T cell line and then its activity is measured upon apoptosis induction in the presence and absence of a caspase-9 inhibitor. The obtained results show that the designed biosensor detects the caspase-9 activity in the cell-free and cell-based systems.