Characterization of fluorescent proteins for STUdying the morphological rearrangements inside single bacterial cells during infection with phiKZ bacteriophage

This work deals with evaluation of key properties of some fluorescent proteins (FPs) in order to use them for observation of redistributing the target proteins between the cytoplasm and pseudonucleus forming in bacterial cell infection by bacteriophage phiKZ. Four FPs, namely, mNeonGreen, mCherry, ECFP and EYFP, have been investigated using fluorescence microscopy. It was established that EYFP, unlike other objects, localized in the pseudonucleus during the infection. This phenomenon gave grounds to exclude EYFP from further experiments. As a result of analyzing the obtained values of FP key parameters, a set of FPs suitable for studying the process of bacterial cells infection by fluorescence microscopy was found.