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Institute of Biological Chemistry and National Core Facilities of High Throughput Protein Production, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan
Reprint requests to: Ting-Fang Wang or Andrew H.-J. Wang, Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan; e-mail: tfwang{at}gate.sinica.edu.tw or ahjwang{at}gate.sinica.edu.tw; fax: +886-2-27889759.
(RECEIVED September 16, 2004; FINAL REVISION December 9, 2004; ACCEPTED December 9, 2004)
| Abstract |
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Keywords: tobacco etch virus protease; sticky-end PCR; fusion protein approach
Abbreviations: TEVP, tobacco etch virus protease rsTEV, TEV recognition site Sso, Sulfolobus solfataricus MBP, maltose binding protein Trx, thioredoxin GST, glutathione S-transferase CBP, calmodulin binding protein His6, hexahistidine tag FC, fusion carrier
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/doi/10.1110/ps.041129605.
| Introduction |
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Because of concerns about the impact of carrier proteins or affinity tags on the structure or activity of a passenger target protein, it is ordinarily desirable to remove them. Typically, passenger target protein is separated from the fusion carrier by site-specifically proteolysis after affinity chromatography. It is this step that was considered to be the Achilles heel of fusion protein approach, particularly in applications such as structural biology or proteindrug production. It is relatively common to encounter a situation in which fusion carriers cannot be processed effectively because of the steric hindrance at the cleavage site. Tedious optimization of cleavage conditions in conjunction with the high cost of proteases (e.g., Factor Xa and enterokinase) often prevent further use of this approach. In the worst circumstances, the cleaved products aggregate immediately after removal from their fusion carriers. In some situations, affinity tags in fusion proteins fail to interact efficiently with their immobilized ligands. Finally, the resulting cleavage products may contain extraneous amino acid residues due to the introduction of a protease-specific recognition site as well as the restriction enzyme cloning sites in the engineered linker region. Although the last scenario can be overcome by the use of Factor Xa or tobacco etch virus protease (TEVP) (Sambrook and Russell 2000), a rather long PCR forward primer must be used for addition of the protease recognition site at the 5' end of the passenger protein gene.
Because of its higher stringent sequence specificity, TEVP is more often used than other proteases, including Factor Xa or enterokinase. Recent biochemical and structural studies indicate that TEVP specifically cleaves the amino acid sequence -Glu(P6)-P5-P4-Tyr(P3)-P2-Gln(P1)-
-P1'- in a fusion protein, where P2, P4, and P5 positions are nonconserved amino acids (Dougherty et al. 1989; Kapust et al. 2002). It had been shown that almost all side chains (except Pro) can be accommodated in the P1' position with little impact on the efficiency of processing (Phan et al. 2002). An intracellular fusion protein processing system had been developed and exhibited high specificity in processing in Escherichia coli. This system used two compatible expression vectors to separately produce TEVP and a maltose binding protein (MBP) fusion protein containing the TEV recognition site (rsTEV) (Kapust and Waugh 2000). However, this intracellular processing system still will encounter most problems of the in vitro cleavage methods described above.
In an effort to further ameliorate the TEVP intracellular processing system, we found out that an MBP-TEVP-rsTEV-GFP-His6 fusion protein is able to carry out near 100% site-specific autonomous cleavage in vivo, and generates MBP-TEVP and GFP-His6 with a large quantity and high solubility. Sticky-end PCR cloning strategy (Shih et al. 1998; Wang and Wang 2004) was applied to further modify this fusion protein construct so that it could successfully yield one of 20 otherwise identical GFP-His6 proteins with different amino acids in the P1' position. Therefore, this method allows one to produce recombinant proteins with the native amino termini from MBP fusion proteins. The same design was also utilized here to modify other affinity tag vectors, including MBP, NusA, thioredoxin (Trx), glutathione S-transferase (GST), calmodulin binding protein (CBP), and hexahistidine tag (His6). Taken together, this method makes it possible to quickly clone and screen multiple affinity tag or carrier protein vectors that yield native proteins in vivo.
| Results |
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70,000) was well induced and soluble (Fig. 1B
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Production of recombinant proteins with a native amino acid sequence
Owing to the presence of aminopeptidase (and also endopeptidase) activities in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, the N-terminal fMet or Met amino acid is often split off, leaving the other amino acid residues as the N terminus in processed native proteins. It is often desirable to carry out site-specific cleavage to yield native N termini, since they may play an essential structural or functional role. Here we design a general approach that is more effective in PCR cloning and is able to autonomously produce recombination proteins with native amino termini. First of all, an SnaBI restriction enzyme site (5'-TACGTA-3') was created as described in Figure 2A
, so as that the amino acid residue in the P2 position will be replaced from Phe (Fig. 1A
) to Val (Fig. 2A
). This modification allows cloning of any target protein gene into the MBP-TEV expression vector between the 5' end SnaBI and the 3' end XhoI sites (with or without the stop codon) by the sticky-end PCR method (Fig. 2B
). The method requires three PCR primers (one forward and two reverse) and reactions in two separate tubes. Both PCR products were purified and mixed equally. After denaturation and renaturation,
50% of the final products carry one SnaBI blunt end and one XhoI cohesive end, and are ready for ligation even without restriction digestion of PCR products. This method is suitable for cloning any gene, even genes with internal SnaBI or XhoI restriction sites. To optimize cloning efficiency, sticky-end PCR products were 5' phosphorylated with T4 poly-nucleotide kinase and the vectors were dephosphorylated by calf intestine alkaline phosphatase. Finally, this cloning strategy allows one to express proteins with native amino termini, because all 20 amino acid residues can be chosen at the P1' position. The resulting fusion protein construct was illustrated as Figure 2C
, where Z represents the P1' amino acid.
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Parallel cloning and screening of multiple self-cleavage fusion protein vectors
This self-processing strategy was further expanded to several other fusion carrier or affinity tag expression systems, including NusA, thioredoxin (Trx), glutathione S-transferase (GST), calmodulin binding protein (CBP), His6 tag, etc. We constructed five additional TEVP fusion vectors, including GST-TEVP, Trx-TEVP, NusA-TEVP, CBP-TEVP, and His6-TEVP. All these vectors shares the same TEV recognition site as well as the SnaBI and XhoI restriction sites (Fig. 3A
), so that one could carry out parallel cloning of sticky-end PCR products as described in Figure 2C
. As indicated by SDS-PAGE (Fig. 3B
) and Western blot using anti-GFP antibody (Fig. 3C
), all six vectors successfully carried out intracellular cleavage and produced EGFP-His6 proteins (Fig. 3
).
| Discussion |
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Here we have developed an intracellular self-processing fusion protein system for producing soluble native protein in E. coli. This same strategy can also be applied to facilitate native protein production in other parkaryotic and eukaryotic heterologous expression systems. Our new design avoids not only the use of expensive proteases for fusion protein cleavage but also the tedious cloning efforts into different expression vectors. Parallel cloning was achieved here by the sticky-end PCR method in conjunction with two unique cloning sites: SnaBI and XhoI. It can be applied to clone any gene, including those with internal SnaBI and XhoI.
The choice of an SnaBI site is also very intriguing, because it greatly improves vectors for the expression of fusion proteins with a TEV protease cleavage site. Following proteolytic cleavage with TEV protease, a passenger protein with the desired N terminus can be obtained. This design is not only feasible in cis, as described in this study (e.g., the MBP-TEVP-rsTEV-passenger protein), it is also useful for common trans approaches (e.g., the MBP-rsTEV-passenger protein). Therefore, we believe this approach will greatly help in screening the expression of a large number of native proteins for functional and structural studies.
Most protein carriers used in the fusion protein approach also are affinity tags. Admittedly, the in vivo cleavage approach described in the present study may deprive the advantage of affinity tags in protein purification. Nevertheless, we still find this approach very useful, particularly in those cases that functionality and solubility of proteins must be taken as priorities. After all, there are many methods available for protein purification. For example, our new design would significantly augment the practicability of fusion protein approach in protein drug research.
Another technical concern of our cis approach is the potential interference with folding of the passenger protein caused by upstream TEV protease. It had been reported that one partner of a hybrid protein can be destabilized by the other partner while maintaining its structural and functional characteristics (Blondel et al. 1996). Intriguingly, a similar model has also been proposed to explain why MBP is uncommonly effective at promoting the solubility and folding of its fusion partners (Kapust and Waugh 1999). Therefore, it would be interesting to find out if the TEV protein could interfere (either negatively or positively) with foldability or stability of the C-terminal passenger proteins. However, in the present study, we did not observe any apparent folding problem with MBP-TEVP-rsTEV-GFP-His6 and MBP-TEVP-rsTEV-Sso1889-His6. Finally, we suggest that the folding interference problem may likely be overcome by a proper design of the "linker sequence" between the TEV protease and passenger protein.
| Materials and methods |
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0.6) were induced with 0.1 mM IPTG at 18°20°C for 24 h. We found that low temperature and long induction time greatly facilitate correct protein folding (Shih et al. 2002). Anti-His6 antibody (Clontech) and anti-GFP antibody (Molecular Probes) were used for Western blot analysis.
Living cell microscopy
The EGFP fusion proteins were visualized in living cells. After IPTG induction, E. coli cells were harvested by centrifugation, washed once, and then resuspend with the same volume of phosphate-base saline. About 2 µL was applied to a microscope slide, excess liquid was aspirated, and a glass coverslip was placed on the slide. The cell outlines were visualized simultaneously with the GFP signal using Chroma filter set no. 86002v1. Images were captured with a Leica DMR microscopy plus a cooled charge-coupled device (CCD) camera (Roper Scientific) and MetaVue software (Universal Imaging Corporation).
| Footnotes |
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| Acknowledgments |
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| References |
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Kapust, R.B. and Waugh, D.S. 1999. Escherichia coli maltose-binding protein is uncommonly effective at promoting the solubility of polypeptides to which it is fused. Protein Sci. 8: 16681674.[Abstract]
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Sambrook, J. and Russell, D.W. 2000. Molecular cloning: A laboratory manual. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.
Shih, Y.P., Kung, W.-M., Chen, J.C., Yeh, C.H., Wang, A.H.-J., and Wang, T.F. 2002. High-throughput screening of soluble recombinant proteins. Protein Sci. 11: 17141719.
Wang, T.F. and Wang, A.H.-J. 2004. High-throughput screening of soluble recombinant proteins. In Purifying proteins for proteomics: A laboratory manual (ed. R.J. Simpson), pp. 111119. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.
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