A PCR-based strategy to generate yeast strains expressing endogenous levels of amino-terminal epitope-tagged proteins

An epitope tag introduced to a gene of interest (GOI) greatly increases the ease of studying cellular proteins. Rapid PCR-based strategies for epitope tagging a protein's C-terminus at its native gene locus are widely used in yeast. C-terminal epitope tagging is not suitable for all proteins, however. Epitope tags fused to the C-terminus can interfere with function of some proteins or can even be removed by C-terminal protein processing. To overcome such problems, proteins can be tagged with epitopes at their amino-termini, but generating yeast strains expressing N-terminal epitope tagged genes under control of the endogenous promoter at the native locus is comparatively more difficult. Strategies to introduce N-terminal epitope tags have been reported previously but often introduce additional sequences other than the epitope tag into the genome. Furthermore, N-terminal tagging of essential genes by current methods requires formation of diploid strains followed by tetrad dissection or expression of an additional copy of the GOI from a plasmid. The strategies described here provide a quick, facile means of epitope tagging the N-terminus of both essential and nonessential genes in a two-step PCR-based procedure. The procedure has the significant advantage of leaving tagged genes under the control of their endogenous promoters, and no additional sequences other than the epitope tag encoding nucleotides are inserted into the genome.