The development of synthetic, low-molecular-weight ligand receptor systems for the selective control of biomolecular interactions remains a major challenge. Binding of oligohistidine peptides to chelators containing Ni2+-loaded nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA) moieties is one of the most widely used and best-characterised recognition systems. Recognition units containing multiple NTA moieties (multi...

Insolubility of recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli is a major impediment to their production for structural and functional studies. One way to circumvent this problem is to fuse an aggregation-prone protein to a highly soluble partner. E. coli maltose-binding protein (MBP) has emerged as one of the most effective solubilizing agents. In this chapter, we describe how to construct combinato...

To understand better the mechanisms of resistance-nodulation-division (RND)-type multidrug efflux pumps, we examined the Escherichia coli AcrD pump, whose typical substrates, aminoglycosides, are not expected to diffuse spontaneously across the lipid bilayer. The hexahistidine-tagged AcrD protein was purified and reconstituted into unilamellar proteoliposomes. Its activity was measured by the p...

Carbonic anhydrases catalyze the interconversion of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate. Human carbonic anhydrase isozyme III with a C-terminal hexahistidine tag was overexpressed in Eschericha coli, purified and crystallized. Diffraction data (93.4% completeness) were collected to 2.2 A resolution on an in-house R-AXIS IV++ image-plate system with Osmic mirrors and a Rigaku HU-H3R CU rotating-anode ...

Fusion-tag affinity chromatography is a key technique in recombinant protein purification. Current methods for protein recovery from mammalian cells are hampered by the need for feed stream clarification. We have developed a method for direct capture using immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) of hexahistidine (His6) tagged proteins from unclarified mammalian cell feed streams. The p...

Since immobilized metal ion affinity chromatography (IMAC) was first reported, several modifications have been developed. Among them, Ni(2+) immobilized by chelation with nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA) bound to a solid support has become the most common method for the purification of proteins carrying either a C- or N-terminal histidine (His) tag. Despite its broad application in protein purificat...

An important goal is to identify the direct activation domain (AD)-interacting components of the transcriptional machinery within the context of native complexes. Toward this end, we first demonstrate that the multisubunit TFIID, SAGA, mediator, and Swi/Snf coactivator complexes from transcriptionally competent whole-cell yeast extracts were all capable of specifically interacting with the prot...

RATIONALE Bunyaviruses have become a major threat to both humans and livestock in Europe and the Americas. The nucleocapsid (N) protein of these viruses is key to the replication cycle and knowledge of the N oligomerisation state is central to understanding the viral lifecycle and for development of therapeutic strategies. METHODS Bunyamwera virus and Schmallenberg virus N proteins (BUNV-N an...

Rhp14 of Schizosaccharomyces pombe is homologous to human XPA and Saccharomyces cerevisiae Rad14, which act in nucleotide excision repair of DNA damages induced by ultraviolet light and chemical agents. Cells with disrupted rhp14 were highly sensitive to ultraviolet light, and epistasis analysis with swi10 (nucleotide excision repair) and rad2 (Uve1-dependent ultraviolet light damage repair pat...

Leptospirosis is a worldwide zoonosis caused by pathogenic Leptospira. The whole-genome sequence of L. interrogans serovar Copenhageni together with bioinformatics tools represent a great opportunity to search for novel antigen candidates that could be used as subunit vaccine against leptospirosis. We focused on six genes encoding for conserved hypothetical proteins predicted to be exported to ...