Quantitative Fluorescent Labeling of Aldehyde-Tagged Proteins for Single-Molecule Imaging

A major hurdle for molecular mechanistic studies of many proteins is the lack of a general method for fluorescent labeling with high efficiency, specificity, and speed. By incorporating an aldehyde motif genetically into a protein and improving the labeling kinetics substantially under mild conditions, we achieved fast, site-specific labeling of a protein with ~100% efficiency while maintaining the biological function. We demonstrate that an aldehyde-tagged protein can be specifically labeled in cell extracts without protein purification and then can be used in single-molecule pull-down analysis. We further show the unique power of our method in a series of single-molecule studies on the transient interactions and switching between two quantitatively labeled DNA polymerases on their processivity factor.