Expression of human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) major (L1) and minor (L2) capsid proteins in insect cells as polyhistidine fusion proteins.

Thus to obtain HPV-16 L1 and L2 proteins for serological studies, we have produced fusion proteins with cleavable polyhistidine tails to permit purification on nickel affinity columns. HPV-16 L1 and L2 open readin frames (from HPV-16 isolate 112 [l]? were cloned into the Nco-1 sites of pAcSGHis (C) and pAcSGHis (A) vectors which were transfected into Sf-21 cells with wild type AcMNPV. The resulting (unpurified) HPV-16tl and L2 fusion proteins proteins respectively had major roducts of 61 and 67 KDa in western blots ?Figure 1). Figure 1. A: Left, Coomassie blue stained PAGE gel of molecular weight markers (M), uninfected Sf-21 cells (U), cells expressing non-fused (L1) or polyhistidine/Ll fusion protein (Llh). Right, corresponding western blot.