ABSTRACT
Protein engineering strategies facilitating controlled and spontaneous assembly of macromolecular complexes are of great interest for the design of artificial multi-enzyme systems of pre-defined composition. Here we have combined affinity proteins from different sources to achieve specific and reversible anchoring of affinity domain-tagged reporter proteins to a cellulose-anchored fusion protein. The design principle mimics the architecture of macromolecular cellulosome complexes produced by some cellulolytic microbes. A fusion protein between a cellulose-binding module (CBM1Cel6A) of the Trichoderma reesei cellobiohydrolase Cel6A and a five-domain staphylococcal protein A (SPA) was constructed to serve as platform for docking of easily detectable reporter proteins onto cellulose surfaces. In turn, the reporter proteins were produced as fusions to two copies of a SPA-binding affinity protein (an affibody denoted Z(SPA-1)), selected from a phage display library constructed by combinatorial protein engineering. In a series of experiments, involving repeated washing and low pH elution, affinity-tagged Enhanced Green Fluorescent Protein (EGFP) and Fusarium solani pisi lipase cutinase reporter proteins were both found to be specifically directed from solution to the same region of a cellulose filter paper where SPA-CBM1Cel6A fusion protein had been previously applied. This showed that the SPA-CBM1Cel6A fusion protein had been stably anchored to the cellulose surface without loss of binding capacity and that the interaction between SPA and the Z(SPA-1) affibody domains was selective. The generality of this biospecificity-driven system for assembly applications is discussed.
Subject(s)
Cellulose/chemistry , Cellulosomes , Enzymes, Immobilized/chemistry , Multiprotein Complexes/chemistry , Protein Engineering , Cellulose 1,4-beta-Cellobiosidase/chemistry , Cellulose 1,4-beta-Cellobiosidase/genetics , Enzymes, Immobilized/genetics , Fusarium/genetics , Green Fluorescent Proteins/chemistry , Green Fluorescent Proteins/genetics , Lipase/chemistry , Lipase/genetics , Peptide Library , Peptides/chemistry , Peptides/genetics , Staphylococcal Protein A/chemistry , Staphylococcal Protein A/genetics , Trichoderma/geneticsABSTRACT
Dander from the domestic cat (Felis domesticus) is one of the most common causes of IgE-mediated allergy. Attempts to produce tetrameric folded major allergen Fel d 1 by recombinant methods with structural features similar to the natural allergen have been only partially successful. In this study, a recombinant folded Fel d 1 with molecular and biological properties similar to the natural counterpart was produced. A synthetic gene coding for direct fusion of the Fel d 1 chain 2 N-terminally to chain 1 was constructed by overlapping oligonucleotides in PCR. Escherichia coli expression resulted in a non-covalently associated homodimer with an apparent molecular mass of 30 kDa defined by size exclusion chromatography. Furthermore, each 19,177-Da subunit displayed a disulfide pattern identical to that found in the natural Fel d 1, i.e. Cys3(1) Cys73(2), Cys44(1)-Cys48(2), Cys70(1)-Cys7(2), as determined by electrospray mass spectrometry after tryptic digestion. Circular dichroism analysis showed identical folds of natural and recombinant Fel d 1. Furthermore, recombinant Fel d l reacted specifically with serum IgE, inducing expression of CD203c on basophils and lymphoproliferative responses in cat-allergic patients. The results show that the overall fold and immunological properties of the recombinant Fel d 1 are very similar to those of natural Fel d 1. Moreover, the recombinant Fel d 1 construct provides a tool for defining the three-dimensional structure of Fel d 1 and represents a reagent for diagnosis and allergen-specific immunotherapy of cat allergy.
