Bacterial Growth Inhibition Screen (BGIS) identifies a loss?of?function mutant of the DEK oncogene, indicating DNA modulating activities of DEK in chromatin

The DEK oncoprotein regulates cellular chromatin function via a number of protein–protein interactions. However, the biological relevance its unique pseudo-SAP/SAP-box domain, which transmits DNA modulating activities in vitro, remains largely speculative. As hypothesis-driven mutations failed to yield DNA-binding null (DBN) mutants, we combined random mutagenesis with Bacterial Growth Inhibition Screen (BGIS) overcome this bottleneck. Re-expression DEK-DBN mutant newly established human knockout cells reduce increase nuclear size as compared wild type, indicating roles for DEK–DNA interactions organization. Our results extend functional metazoan and highlight predictive ability recombinant protein toxicity E. coli unbiased studies eukaryotic domains.