Combining single molecule atomic force microscopy (AFM) and protein engineering techniques, here we demonstrate that we can use recombination-based techniques to engineer novel elastomeric proteins by recombining protein fragments from structurally homologous parent proteins. Using I27 and I32 domains from the muscle protein titin as parent template proteins, we systematically shuffled the seco...

Merozoite surface protein 1 (MSP1) of Plasmodium falciparum has been implicated as an important target of acquired immunity, and candidate components for a vaccine include polymorphic epitopes in the N-terminal polymorphic block 2 region. We designed a polyvalent hybrid recombinant protein incorporating sequences of the three major allelic types of block 2 together with a composite repeat seque...

munc18c is a critical protein involved in trafficking events associated with syntaxin 4 and which also mediates inhibitory effects on vesicle docking and/or fusion. To investigate the domains of munc18c responsible for its interaction with syntaxin 4, fragments of munc18c were generated and their interaction with syntaxin 4 examined in vivo by the yeast two-hybrid assay. In vitro protein-protei...

Bacteria producing endonuclease colicins are protected against the cytotoxic activity by a small immunity protein that binds with high affinity and specificity to inactivate the endonuclease. This complex is released into the extracellular medium, and the immunity protein is jettisoned upon binding of the complex to susceptible cells. However, it is not known how and at what stage during infect...

Enamel crystallites form in a protein matrix located proximal to the ameloblast cell layer. This unique organic extracellular matrix is constructed from structural protein components biosynthesized and secreted by ameloblasts. To date, three distinct classes of enamel matrix proteins have been cloned. These are the amelogenins, tuftelin, and ameloblastin, with recent data implicating ameloblast...

We used our collection of Arabidopsis transcription factor (TF) ORFeome clones to construct protein microarrays containing as many as 802 TF proteins. These protein microarrays were used for both protein-DNA and protein-protein interaction analyses. For protein-DNA interaction studies, we examined AP2/ERF family TFs and their cognate cis-elements. By careful comparison of the DNA-binding specif...

The determination of protein-protein interaction networks is a difficult and important problem in biology. Present day approaches to this problem are usually based on two hybrid experimental measurements coupled with refinement and extrapolation using computational techniques. Here we consider a computational method for similar refinement and extrapolation using experimental data from which pro...