Boronic
acid-containing fluorescent molecules have been widely
used to sense hydrogen peroxide and peroxynitrite, which are important
reactive oxygen and nitrogen species in biological systems. However,
it has been challenging to gain specificity. Our previous studies
developed genetically encoded, green fluorescent peroxynitrite biosensors
by genetically incorporating a boronic acid-containing noncanonical
amino acid (ncAA), p-boronophenylalanine (pBoF), into the chromophore of circularly permuted green
fluorescent proteins (cpGFPs). In this work, we introduced pBoF to amino acid residues spatially close to the chromophore
of an enhanced circularly permuted red fluorescent protein (ecpApple).
Our effort has resulted in two responsive ecpApple mutants: one bestows
reactivity toward both peroxynitrite and hydrogen peroxide, while
the other, namely, pnRFP, is a selective red fluorescent peroxynitrite
biosensor. We characterized pnRFP in vitro and in
live mammalian cells. We further studied the structure and sensing
mechanism of pnRFP using X-ray crystallography, 11B-NMR,
and computational methods. The boron atom in pnRFP adopts an sp2-hybridization geometry in a hydrophobic pocket, and the reaction
of pnRFP with peroxynitrite generates a product with a twisted chromophore,
corroborating the observed “turn-off” fluorescence response.
Thus, this study extends the color palette of genetically encoded
peroxynitrite biosensors, provides insight into the response mechanism
of the new biosensor, and demonstrates the versatility of using protein
scaffolds to modulate chemoreactivity.