A synthetic amino acid that fuctions as a small molecule switch for activation of protein function through the site-specific incorporation; a small-molecule-removable protecting group into the protein of interest using a pyrrolysyl transfer RNA synthetase/tRNACUA pair in mammalian cells; can be applied to the conditional control of several cellular processes, including bioluminescence (luciferase), fluorescence (enhanced green fluorescent protein), protein translocation (nuclear localization sequence), DNA recombination (Cre) and gene editing (Cas9).
