绿色荧光蛋白及其应用

随着对绿色荧光蛋白(green fluorescent protein,GFP)研究的不断深入,人们对其结构、荧光产生机理等已有较为全面的认识。近年来利用GFP及其它荧光蛋白(FPs)发展了诸如荧光互补技术(FC)、荧光共振能量转移技术(FRET)和超分辨成像(super-resolution imaging)等一系列新技术,极大地促进了生物学、医药科学的研究。主要介绍了荧光蛋白的结构,荧光产生的机理,不同类型的荧光蛋白和基于荧光蛋白产生的新技术等方面的最新研究进展。     

珊瑚和海葵来源红荧光蛋白的研究和应用

绿色荧光蛋白作为标记蛋白和报告蛋白在生物学研究中应用越来越广。但在荧光共振能量转移(fluorescenceresonanceenergytransfer,FRET)等技术中存在一些缺陷,需要更大波长范围的荧光蛋白。最近研究发现了多种来源于珊瑚和海葵的红荧光蛋白,这些长波长的荧光蛋白对绿色荧光蛋白是一种很好的代替和补充,可以实现细胞内多荧光标记,提供更理想的FRET荧光对。经随机突变和定点突变等方法改建获得的红荧光蛋白变种显示出更高的荧光强度,成熟时间也更短。目前应用较多的是来源于香菇珊瑚(Discosomasp.)的红荧光蛋白DsRed。     

荧光蛋白研究进展

荧光蛋白在生物学众多研究领域中有着广泛的应用,基于荧光蛋白的分子探针和标记方法已成为活细胞或活体内动态成像研究生物大分子或细胞功能的重要工具。本文对现有荧光蛋白的种类和理化特性,及其在生物学研究中的应用进行了综述介绍。重点介绍了近年来荧光蛋白在亮度、Stokes位移、光谱改变等方面的研究进展,介绍了光转换与光活化荧光蛋白及其在超分辨荧光成像技术中的应用。最后对荧光蛋白未来的发展方向进行了展望。     

含Dsred类似生色团的红色荧光蛋白的发展及应用

自从绿色荧光蛋白(GFP)被发现以来,荧光蛋白在生物医学领域已经成为一种重要的荧光成像工具．随着红色荧光蛋白DsRed的出现,各种优化的DsRed突变体和远红荧光蛋白也不断涌现．其中荧光蛋白生色团的形成机制对改建更优的荧光蛋白变种影响很大,对于红色荧光蛋白而言,大多数的红色荧光蛋白的生色团类型为DsRed类似生色团,在此基础上又出现了Far-red DsRed类似生色团．目前,含DsRed类似生色团的荧光蛋白主要有单体红色荧光蛋白、光转换荧光蛋白、斯托克斯红移蛋白、荧光计时器等．这些优化的荧光蛋白作为分子探针可以实现对活细胞、细胞器或胞内分子的时空标记和追踪,已经在生物工程学、细胞生物学、基础医学领域得到广泛应用．本文综述了含DsRed类似生色团的荧光蛋白的研究进展及其应用,以及由此发展起来的远红荧光蛋白在活体显微成像技术中的应用,并展望了荧光探针技术研究的新方向．     

绿色荧光蛋白——照亮生命科学的一盏明灯

绿色荧光蛋白的发现及应用具有划时代的重要意义,它不仅为当代生物学研究提供了极为实用的基本研究手段,并且在此基础上改造发展和发现了一系列荧光蛋白,拓展了应用范围。这使得对微观生物学的研究也可以进入一个时空结合,研究鲜活动态过程的新时代。本文主要回顾总结了绿色荧光蛋白的发现、优化改造及其应用。     

绿色荧光蛋白—现代细胞生物学与分子生物学研究领域的新标记物

从多管水母属Ａｅｑｕｏｒｅｎ ｖｉｃｔｕｒｉａ分离出的绿色荧光蛋白,因其特有的生物化学性质及该基因在异源细胞内的表达产物亦能产生强烈的绿色荧光,使其在现代细胞生物学和分子生物学研究领域的应用具有广阔前景。本文就其研究进展及春应用进行简要综述。     

绿色荧光蛋白在蛋白质研究中的应用

绿色荧光蛋白（green fluorescent protein,GFP）自发现以来,由于具有自发荧光等特性,在分子生物学和细胞生物学领域得到广泛应用。GFP作为一种报道分子,在研究蛋白质相互作用和构象变化、检测蛋白质表达、蛋白质和细胞荧光示踪中,起到了重要的作用。该文通过对绿色荧光蛋白特性的分析．介绍其作为荧光标记在蛋白质研究中的应用,并展望进一步的研究前景。     

橙色荧光蛋白——绿色荧光蛋白GFPxm的改造

最近报道了从大型多管水母中分离出新的gfp基因。经大肠杆菌表达并纯化出的绿色荧光蛋白 (GFPxm)具有 4 76nm的激发峰和 4 96nm的发射峰 ,但是只能在低温下成熟的缺点限制了它的应用。这里进一步报道GFPxm的 12种突变型。在大肠杆菌中的表达结果表明 ,有 7种突变型在 37℃条件下产生高的荧光强度。在 2 5、32和 37℃条件下表达 6h ,GFPxm16、GFPxm18和GFPxm19的相对荧光强度均高于增强型绿色荧光蛋白 (EGFP) ,而GFPxm16和GFPxm16 3在 4 2℃高温表达时仍能保持高的荧光强度。这 7种突变型中的 4种在哺乳动物细胞中已获得良好表达。此外 ,有 6种突变型的荧光光谱红移 ,目前所达到的最长激发峰为 5 14nm、最长发射峰为 5 2 5nm。另外有 3种突变型具有包括紫外在内的两个激发峰 ,1种突变型只有单一的紫外激发峰。首次报道具有橙色荧光的突变型OFPxm ,它的激发峰为 5 0 9nm、发射峰为 5 2 3nm。 5 2 3nm属于黄绿色 ,但肉眼看到的蛋白为橙色。OFPxm在高温下可得到高水平表达且很好地成熟 ,但是因为低的量子产率而荧光强度相对较低。     

绿色荧光蛋白及其在细胞生物研究中的应用

绿色荧光蛋白(green fluorescent protein,GFP)作为一种新型的标记蛋白,已被广泛的应用。它发出的荧光稳定,检测简单,结果真实可靠。GFP可对活细胞的生理过程进行监控,并且可以用于活细胞中蛋白质分子的定位及动力学研究。其特有的生物化学性质使其在细胞生物学和分子生物学领域有着广泛的应用前景。     

绿色荧光蛋白——现代细胞生物学与分子生物学研究领域的新标记物

从多管水母属A equoren v ictu ria 分离出的绿色荧光蛋白(GFP) , 因其特有的生物化学性质及该基因在异源细胞内的表达产物亦能产生强烈的绿色荧光, 使其在现代细胞生物学和分子生物学研究领域的应用具有广阔前景。本文就其研究进展及其应用进行简要综述。     

Symmetric primary and tertiary structure mutations within a symmetric superfold: a solution, not a constraint, to achieve a foldable polypeptide

In previous studies designed to increase the primary structure symmetry within the hydrophobic core of human acidic fibroblast growth factor (FGF-1) a combination of five mutations were accommodated, resulting in structure, stability and folding kinetic properties similar to wild-type (despite the symmetric constraint upon the set of core residues). A sixth mutation in the core, involving a highly conserved Met residue at position 67, appeared intolerant to substitution. Structural analysis suggested that the local packing environment of position 67 involved two regions of apparent insertions that distorted the tertiary structure symmetry inherent in the beta-trefoil architecture. It was postulated that a symmetric constraint upon the primary structure within the core could only be achieved after these insertions had been deleted (concomitantly increasing the tertiary structure symmetry). The deletion of these insertions is now shown to permit mutation of position 67, thereby increasing the primary structure symmetry relationship within the core. Furthermore, despite the imposed symmetric constraint upon both the primary and tertiary structure, the resulting mutant form of FGF-1 is substantially more stable. The apparent inserted regions are shown to be associated with heparin-binding functionality; however, despite a marked reduction in heparin-binding affinity the mutant form of FGF-1 is surprisingly approximately 70 times more potent in 3T3 fibroblast mitogenic assays. The results support the hypothesis that primary structure symmetry within a symmetric protein superfold represents a possible solution, rather than a constraint, to achieving a foldable polypeptide.     

Integrating statistical pair potentials into protein complex prediction

The biophysical study of protein-protein interactions and docking has important implications in our understanding of most complex cellular signaling processes. Most computational approaches to protein docking involve a tradeoff between the level of detail incorporated into the model and computational power required to properly handle that level of detail. In this work, we seek to optimize that balance by showing that we can reduce the complexity of model representation and thus make the computation tractable with minimal loss of predictive performance. We also introduce a pair-wise statistical potential suitable for docking that builds on previous work and show that this potential can be incorporated into our fast fourier transform-based docking algorithm ZDOCK. We use the Protein Docking Benchmark to illustrate the improved performance of this potential compared with less detailed other scoring functions. Furthermore, we show that the new potential performs well on antibody-antigen complexes, with most predictions clustering around the Complementarity Determining Regions of antibodies without any manual intervention.     

The heat capacity of proteins

The heat capacity plays a major role in the determination of the energetics of protein folding and molecular recognition. As such, a better understanding of this thermodynamic parameter and its structural origin will provide new insights for the development of better molecular design strategies. In this paper we have analyzed the absolute heat capacity of proteins in different conformations. The results of these studies indicate that three major terms account for the absolute heat capacity of a protein: (1) one term that depends only on the primary or covalent structure of a protein and contains contributions from vibrational frequencies arising from the stretching and bending modes of each valence bond and internal rotations; (2) a term that contains the contributions of noncovalent interactions arising from secondary and tertiary structure; and (3) a term that contains the contributions of hydration. For a typical globular protein in solution the bulk of the heat capacity at 25°C is given by the covalent structure term (close to 85% of the total). The hydration term contributes about 15 and 40% to the total heat capacity of the native and unfolded states, respectively. The contribution of non-covalent structure to the total heat capacity of the native state is positive but very small and does not amount to more than 3% at 25°C. The change in heat capacity upon unfolding is primarily given by the increase in the hydration term (about 95%) and to a much lesser extent by the loss of noncovalent interactions (up to ～5%). It is demonstrated that a single universal mathematical function can be used to represent the partial molar heat capacity of the native and unfolded states of proteins in solution. This function can be experimentally written in terms of the molecular weight, the polar and apolar solvent accessible surface areas, and the total area buried from the solvent. This unique function accurately predicts the different magnitude and temperature dependences of the heat capacity of both the native and unfolded states, and therefore of the heat capacity changes associated with folding/unfolding transitions. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Protein microarrays as a discovery tool for studying protein–protein interactions

Exploring the function of the genome and the encoded proteins has emerged as a new and exciting challenge in the postgenomic era. Novel technologies come into view that promise to be valuable for the investigation not only of single proteins, but of entire protein networks. Protein microarrays are the innovative assay platform for highly parallel in vitro studies of protein–protein interactions. Due to their flexibility and multiplexing capacity, protein microarrays benefit basic research, diagnosis and biomedicine. This review provides an overview on the basic principles of protein microarrays and their potential to multiplex protein–protein interaction studies.     

Lethal mutations in the major homology region and their suppressors act by modulating the dimerization of the rous sarcoma virus capsid protein C‐terminal domain

An infective retrovirus requires a mature capsid shell around the viral replication complex. This shell is formed by about 1500 capsid protein monomers, organized into hexamer and pentamer rings that are linked to each other by the dimerization of the C‐terminal domain (CTD). The major homology region (MHR), the most highly conserved protein sequence across retroviral genomes, is part of the CTD. Several mutations in the MHR appear to block infectivity by preventing capsid formation. Suppressor mutations have been identified that are distant in sequence and structure from the MHR and restore capsid formation. The effects of two lethal and two suppressor mutations on the stability and function of the CTD were examined. No correlation with infectivity was found for the stability of the lethal mutations (D155Y‐CTD, F167Y‐CTD) and suppressor mutations (R185W‐CTD, I190V‐CTD). The stabilities of three double mutant proteins (D155Y/R185W‐CTD, F167Y/R185W‐CTD, and F167Y/I190V‐CTD) were additive. However, the dimerization affinity of the mutant proteins correlated strongly with biological function. The CTD proteins with lethal mutations did not dimerize, while those with suppressor mutations had greater dimerization affinity than WT‐CTD. The suppressor mutations were able to partially correct the dimerization defect caused by the lethal MHR mutations in double mutant proteins. Despite their dramatic effects on dimerization, none of these residues participate directly in the proposed dimerization interface in a mature capsid. These findings suggest that the conserved sequence of the MHR has critical roles in the conformation(s) of the CTD that are required for dimerization and correct capsid maturation. Proteins 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A large scale test of computational protein design: folding and stability of nine completely redesigned globular proteins

A previously developed computer program for protein design, RosettaDesign, was used to predict low free energy sequences for nine naturally occurring protein backbones. RosettaDesign had no knowledge of the naturally occurring sequences and on average 65% of the residues in the designed sequences differ from wild-type. Synthetic genes for ten completely redesigned proteins were generated, and the proteins were expressed, purified, and then characterized using circular dichroism, chemical and temperature denaturation and NMR experiments. Although high-resolution structures have not yet been determined, eight of these proteins appear to be folded and their circular dichroism spectra are similar to those of their wild-type counterparts. Six of the proteins have stabilities equal to or up to 7kcal/mol greater than their wild-type counterparts, and four of the proteins have NMR spectra consistent with a well-packed, rigid structure. These encouraging results indicate that the computational protein design methods can, with significant reliability, identify amino acid sequences compatible with a target protein backbone.     

蛋白质相互作用研究的新技术与新方法

目前,蛋白质相互作用已成为蛋白质组学研究的热点. 新方法的建立及对已有技术的改进标志着蛋白质相互作用研究的不断发展和完善．在技术改进方面,本文介绍了弥补酵母双杂交的蛋白定位受限等缺陷的细菌双杂交系统;根据目标蛋白特性设计和修饰TAP标签来满足复合体研究要求的串联亲和纯化技术,以及在双分子荧光互补基础上发展的动态检测多个蛋白质间瞬时、弱相互作用的多分子荧光互补技术．还综述了近两年建立的新方法：与免疫共沉淀相比,寡沉淀技术直接研究具有活性的蛋白质复合体;减量式定量免疫沉淀方法排除了蛋白质复合体中非特异性相互作用的干扰;原位操作的多表位－配基绘图法避免了样品间差异的影响,以及利用多点吸附和交联加固研究弱蛋白质相互作用的固相蛋白质组学方法.     

Human dihydrofolate reductase and thymidylate synthase form a complex in vitro and co-localize in normal and cancer cells

Enzymes involved in thymidylate biosynthesis, thymidylate synthase (TS), and dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) are well-known targets in cancer chemotherapy. In this study, we demonstrated for the first time, that human TS and DHFR form a strong complex in vitro and co-localize in human normal and colon cancer cell cytoplasm and nucleus. Treatment of cancer cells with methotrexate or 5-fluorouracil did not affect the distribution of either enzyme within the cells. However, 5-FU, but not MTX, lowered the presence of DHFR-TS complex in the nucleus by 2.5-fold. The results may suggest the sequestering of TS by FdUMP in the cytoplasm and thereby affecting the translocation of DHFR-TS complex to the nucleus. Providing a strong likelihood of DHFR-TS complex formation in vivo, the latter complex is a potential new drug target in cancer therapy. In this paper, known 3D structures of human TS and human DHFR, and some protozoan bifunctional DHFR-TS structures as templates, are used to build an in silico model of human DHFR–TS complex structure, consisting of one TS dimer and two DHFR monomers. This complex structure may serve as an initial 3D drug target model for prospective inhibitors targeting interfaces between the DHFR and TS enzymes.     

Characterization of a mammalian Golgi-localized protein complex, COG, that is required for normal Golgi morphology and function

Multiprotein complexes are key determinants of Golgi apparatus structure and its capacity for intracellular transport and glycoprotein modification. Three complexes that have previously been partially characterized include (a) the Golgi transport complex (GTC), identified in an in vitro membrane transport assay, (b) the ldlCp complex, identified in analyses of CHO cell mutants with defects in Golgi-associated glycosylation reactions, and (c) the mammalian Sec34 complex, identified by homology to yeast Sec34p, implicated in vesicular transport. We show that these three complexes are identical and rename them the conserved oligomeric Golgi (COG) complex. The COG complex comprises four previously characterized proteins (Cog1/ldlBp, Cog2/ldlCp, Cog3/Sec34, and Cog5/GTC-90), three homologues of yeast Sec34/35 complex subunits (Cog4, -6, and -8), and a previously unidentified Golgi-associated protein (Cog7). EM of ldlB and ldlC mutants established that COG is required for normal Golgi morphology. "Deep etch" EM of purified COG revealed an approximately 37-nm-long structure comprised of two similarly sized globular domains connected by smaller extensions. Consideration of biochemical and genetic data for mammalian COG and its yeast homologue suggests a model for the subunit distribution within this complex, which plays critical roles in Golgi structure and function.