Development of a single culture expression system for the enzymatic synthesis of fluorinated tyrosine and its incorporation into proteins.

Current experiments that rely on biosynthetic metabolic protein labeling with F often require fluorinated amino acids, which in the case of 2- and 3-fluorotyrosine can be expensive. However, using these amino acids has provided valuable insight into protein dynamics, structure, and function. Here, we develop a new in-cell method for fluorinated tyrosine generation from readily available substituted phenols and subsequent metabolic labeling of proteins in a single bacterial expression culture.