Identification of Protein Complexes in Escherichia coli using Sequential Peptide Affinity Purification in Combination with Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Since most cellular processes are mediated by macromolecular assemblies, the systematic identification of protein-protein interactions (PPI) and the identification of the subunit composition of multi-protein complexes can provide insight into gene function and enhance understanding of biological systems^{1, 2}. Physical interactions can be mapped with high confidence vialarge-scale isolation and characterization of endogenous protein complexes under near-physiological conditions based on affinity purification of chromosomally-tagged proteins in combination with mass spectrometry (APMS). This approach has been successfully applied in evolutionarily diverse organisms, including yeast, flies, worms, mammalian cells, and bacteria^1-6. In particular, we have generated a carboxy-terminal Sequential Peptide Affinity (SPA) dual tagging system for affinity-purifying native protein complexes from cultured gram-negative Escherichia coli, using genetically-tractable host laboratory strains that are well-suited for genome-wide investigations of the fundamental biology and conserved processes of prokaryotes^{1, 2, 7}. Our SPA-tagging system is analogous to the tandem affinity purification method developed originally for yeast^{8, 9}, and consists of a calmodulin binding peptide (CBP) followed by the cleavage site for the highly specific tobacco etch virus (TEV) protease and three copies of the FLAG epitope (3X FLAG), allowing for two consecutive rounds of affinity enrichment. After cassette amplification, sequence-specific linear PCR products encoding the SPA-tag and a selectable marker are integrated and expressed in frame as carboxy-terminal fusions in a DY330 background that is induced to transiently express a highly efficient heterologous bacteriophage lambda recombination system¹⁰. Subsequent dual-step purification using calmodulin and anti-FLAG affinity beads enables the highly selective and efficient recovery of even low abundance protein complexes from large-scale cultures. Tandem mass spectrometry is then used to identify the stably co-purifying proteins with high sensitivity (low nanogram detection limits).Here, we describe detailed step-by-step procedures we commonly use for systematic protein tagging, purification and mass spectrometry-based analysis of soluble protein complexes from E. coli, which can be scaled up and potentially tailored to other bacterial species, including certain opportunistic pathogens that are amenable to recombineering. The resulting physical interactions can often reveal interesting unexpected components and connections suggesting novel mechanistic links. Integration of the PPI data with alternate molecular association data such as genetic (gene-gene) interactions and genomic-context (GC) predictions can facilitate elucidation of the global molecular organization of multi-protein complexes within biological pathways. The networks generated for E. coli can be used to gain insight into the functional architecture of orthologous gene products in other microbes for which functional annotations are currently lacking.     

Non-chromatographic Purification of Recombinant Elastin-like Polypeptides and their Fusions with Peptides and Proteins from Escherichia coli

Elastin-like polypeptides are repetitive biopolymers that exhibit a lower critical solution temperature phase transition behavior, existing as soluble unimers below a characteristic transition temperature and aggregating into micron-scale coacervates above their transition temperature. The design of elastin-like polypeptides at the genetic level permits precise control of their sequence and length, which dictates their thermal properties. Elastin-like polypeptides are used in a variety of applications including biosensing, tissue engineering, and drug delivery, where the transition temperature and biopolymer architecture of the ELP can be tuned for the specific application of interest. Furthermore, the lower critical solution temperature phase transition behavior of elastin-like polypeptides allows their purification by their thermal response, such that their selective coacervation and resolubilization allows the removal of both soluble and insoluble contaminants following expression in Escherichia coli. This approach can be used for the purification of elastin-like polypeptides alone or as a purification tool for peptide or protein fusions where recombinant peptides or proteins genetically appended to elastin-like polypeptide tags can be purified without chromatography. This protocol describes the purification of elastin-like polypeptides and their peptide or protein fusions and discusses basic characterization techniques to assess the thermal behavior of pure elastin-like polypeptide products.     

Real-time Analyses of Retinol Transport by the Membrane Receptor of Plasma Retinol Binding Protein

Vitamin A is essential for vision and the growth/differentiation of almost all human organs. Plasma retinol binding protein (RBP) is the principle and specific carrier of vitamin A in the blood. Here we describe an optimized technique to produce and purify holo-RBP and two real-time monitoring techniques to study the transport of vitamin A by the high-affinity RBP receptor STRA6. The first technique makes it possible to produce a large quantity of high quality holo-RBP (100%-loaded with retinol) for vitamin A transport assays. High quality RBP is essential for functional assays because misfolded RBP releases vitamin A readily and bacterial contamination in RBP preparation can cause artifacts. Real-time monitoring techniques like electrophysiology have made critical contributions to the studies of membrane transport. The RBP receptor-mediated retinol transport has not been analyzed in real time until recently. The second technique described here is the real-time analysis of STRA6-catalyzed retinol release or loading. The third technique is real-time analysis of STRA6-catalyzed retinol transport from holo-RBP to cellular retinol binding protein I (CRBP-I). These techniques provide high sensitivity and resolution in revealing RBP receptor''s vitamin A uptake mechanism.     

A Liquid Phase Affinity Capture Assay Using Magnetic Beads to Study Protein-Protein Interaction: The Poliovirus-Nanobody Example

In this article, a simple, quantitative, liquid phase affinity capture assay is presented. Provided that one protein can be tagged and another protein labeled, this method can be implemented for the investigation of protein-protein interactions. It is based on one hand on the recognition of the tagged protein by cobalt coated magnetic beads and on the other hand on the interaction between the tagged protein and a second specific protein that is labeled. First, the labeled and tagged proteins are mixed and incubated at room temperature. The magnetic beads, that recognize the tag, are added and the bound fraction of labeled protein is separated from the unbound fraction using magnets. The amount of labeled protein that is captured can be determined in an indirect way by measuring the signal of the labeled protein remained in the unbound fraction. The described liquid phase affinity assay is extremely useful when conformational conversion sensitive proteins are assayed. The development and application of the assay is demonstrated for the interaction between poliovirus and poliovirus recognizing nanobodies¹. Since poliovirus is sensitive to conformational conversion² when attached to a solid surface (unpublished results), the use of ELISA is limited and a liquid phase based system should therefore be preferred. An example of a liquid phase based system often used in polioresearch^3,4 is the micro protein A-immunoprecipitation test⁵. Even though this test has proven its applicability, it requires an Fc-structure, which is absent in the nanobodies^6,7. However, as another opportunity, these interesting and stable single-domain antibodies⁸ can be easily engineered with different tags. The widely used (His)₆-tag shows affinity for bivalent ions such as nickel or cobalt, which can on their turn be easily coated on magnetic beads. We therefore developed this simple quantitative affinity capture assay based on cobalt coated magnetic beads. Poliovirus was labeled with ³⁵S to enable unhindered interaction with the nanobodies and to make a quantitative detection feasible. The method is easy to perform and can be established with a low cost, which is further supported by the possibility of effectively regenerating the magnetic beads.     

Recombinant Protein Expression for Structural Biology in HEK 293F Suspension Cells: A Novel and Accessible Approach

The expression and purification of large amounts of recombinant protein complexes is an essential requirement for structural biology studies. For over two decades, prokaryotic expression systems such as E. coli have dominated the scientific literature over costly and less efficient eukaryotic cell lines. Despite the clear advantage in terms of yields and costs of expressing recombinant proteins in bacteria, the absence of specific co-factors, chaperones and post-translational modifications may cause loss of function, mis-folding and can disrupt protein-protein interactions of certain eukaryotic multi-subunit complexes, surface receptors and secreted proteins. The use of mammalian cell expression systems can address these drawbacks since they provide a eukaryotic expression environment. However, low protein yields and high costs of such methods have until recently limited their use for structural biology. Here we describe a simple and accessible method for expressing and purifying milligram quantities of protein by performing transient transfections of suspension grown HEK (Human Embryonic Kidney) 293F cells.     

A Protocol for the Identification of Protein-protein Interactions Based on 15N Metabolic Labeling,Immunoprecipitation, Quantitative Mass Spectrometry and Affinity Modulation

Protein-protein interactions are fundamental for many biological processes in the cell. Therefore, their characterization plays an important role in current research and a plethora of methods for their investigation is available¹. Protein-protein interactions often are highly dynamic and may depend on subcellular localization, post-translational modifications and the local protein environment². Therefore, they should be investigated in their natural environment, for which co-immunoprecipitation approaches are the method of choice³. Co-precipitated interaction partners are identified either by immunoblotting in a targeted approach, or by mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in an untargeted way. The latter strategy often is adversely affected by a large number of false positive discoveries, mainly derived from the high sensitivity of modern mass spectrometers that confidently detect traces of unspecifically precipitating proteins. A recent approach to overcome this problem is based on the idea that reduced amounts of specific interaction partners will co-precipitate with a given target protein whose cellular concentration is reduced by RNAi, while the amounts of unspecifically precipitating proteins should be unaffected. This approach, termed QUICK for QUantitative Immunoprecipitation Combined with Knockdown⁴, employs Stable Isotope Labeling of Amino acids in Cell culture (SILAC)⁵ and MS to quantify the amounts of proteins immunoprecipitated from wild-type and knock-down strains. Proteins found in a 1:1 ratio can be considered as contaminants, those enriched in precipitates from the wild type as specific interaction partners of the target protein. Although innovative, QUICK bears some limitations: first, SILAC is cost-intensive and limited to organisms that ideally are auxotrophic for arginine and/or lysine. Moreover, when heavy arginine is fed, arginine-to-proline interconversion results in additional mass shifts for each proline in a peptide and slightly dilutes heavy with light arginine, which makes quantification more tedious and less accurate^5,6. Second, QUICK requires that antibodies are titrated such that they do not become saturated with target protein in extracts from knock-down mutants.Here we introduce a modified QUICK protocol which overcomes the abovementioned limitations of QUICK by replacing SILAC for ¹⁵N metabolic labeling and by replacing RNAi-mediated knock-down for affinity modulation of protein-protein interactions. We demonstrate the applicability of this protocol using the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as model organism and the chloroplast HSP70B chaperone as target protein⁷ (Figure 1). HSP70s are known to interact with specific co-chaperones and substrates only in the ADP state⁸. We exploit this property as a means to verify the specific interaction of HSP70B with its nucleotide exchange factor CGE1⁹.     

Generation,Purification, and Characterization of Cell-invasive DISC1 Protein Species

Protein aggregation is seen as a general hallmark of chronic, degenerative brain conditions like, for example, in the neurodegenerative diseases Alzheimer''s disease (Aβ, tau), Parkinson''s Disease (α-synuclein), Huntington''s disease (polyglutamine, huntingtin), and others. Protein aggregation is thought to occur due to disturbed proteostasis, i.e. the imbalance between the arising and degradation of misfolded proteins. Of note, the same proteins are found aggregated in sporadic forms of these diseases that are mutant in rare variants of familial forms.Schizophrenia is a chronic progressive brain condition that in many cases goes along with a permanent and irreversible cognitive deficit. In a candidate gene approach, we investigated whether Disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1), a gene cloned in a Scottish family with linkage to chronic mental disease^{1, 2}, could be found as insoluble aggregates in the brain of sporadic cases of schizophrenia³. Using the SMRI CC, we identified in approximately 20 % of cases with CMD but not normal controls or patients with neurodegenerative diseases sarkosyl-insoluble DISC1 immunoreactivity after biochemical fractionation. Subsequent studies in vitro revealed that the aggregation propensity of DISC1 was influenced by disease-associated polymorphism S704C⁴, and that DISC1 aggresomes generated in vitro were cell-invasive⁵, similar to what had been shown for Aβ⁶, tau^7-9, α-synuclein¹⁰, polyglutamine¹¹, or SOD1 aggregates¹². These findings prompted us to propose that at least a subset of cases with CMD, those with aggregated DISC1 might be protein conformational disorders. Here we describe how we generate DISC1 aggresomes in mammalian cells, purify them on a sucrose gradient and use them for cell-invasiveness studies. Similarly, we describe how we generate an exclusively multimeric C-terminal DISC1 fragment, label and purify it for cell invasiveness studies. Using the recombinant multimers of DISC1 we achieve similar cell invasiveness as for a similarly labeled synthetic α-synuclein fragment. We also show that this fragment is taken up in vivo when stereotactically injected into the brain of recipient animals.     

Protein WISDOM: A Workbench for In silico De novo Design of BioMolecules

The aim of de novo protein design is to find the amino acid sequences that will fold into a desired 3-dimensional structure with improvements in specific properties, such as binding affinity, agonist or antagonist behavior, or stability, relative to the native sequence. Protein design lies at the center of current advances drug design and discovery. Not only does protein design provide predictions for potentially useful drug targets, but it also enhances our understanding of the protein folding process and protein-protein interactions. Experimental methods such as directed evolution have shown success in protein design. However, such methods are restricted by the limited sequence space that can be searched tractably. In contrast, computational design strategies allow for the screening of a much larger set of sequences covering a wide variety of properties and functionality. We have developed a range of computational de novo protein design methods capable of tackling several important areas of protein design. These include the design of monomeric proteins for increased stability and complexes for increased binding affinity.To disseminate these methods for broader use we present Protein WISDOM (http://www.proteinwisdom.org), a tool that provides automated methods for a variety of protein design problems. Structural templates are submitted to initialize the design process. The first stage of design is an optimization sequence selection stage that aims at improving stability through minimization of potential energy in the sequence space. Selected sequences are then run through a fold specificity stage and a binding affinity stage. A rank-ordered list of the sequences for each step of the process, along with relevant designed structures, provides the user with a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the design. Here we provide the details of each design method, as well as several notable experimental successes attained through the use of the methods.     

Flow Cytometric Analysis of Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation: A High Throughput Quantitative Method to Study Protein-protein Interaction

Among methods to study protein-protein interaction inside cells, Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation (BiFC) is relatively simple and sensitive. BiFC is based on the production of fluorescence using two non-fluorescent fragments of a fluorescent protein (Venus, a Yellow Fluorescent Protein variant, is used here). Non-fluorescent Venus fragments (VN and VC) are fused to two interacting proteins (in this case, AKAP-Lbc and PDE4D3), yielding fluorescence due to VN-AKAP-Lbc-VC-PDE4D3 interaction and the formation of a functional fluorescent protein inside cells.BiFC provides information on the subcellular localization of protein complexes and the strength of protein interactions based on fluorescence intensity. However, BiFC analysis using microscopy to quantify the strength of protein-protein interaction is time-consuming and somewhat subjective due to heterogeneity in protein expression and interaction. By coupling flow cytometric analysis with BiFC methodology, the fluorescent BiFC protein-protein interaction signal can be accurately measured for a large quantity of cells in a short time. Here, we demonstrate an application of this methodology to map regions in PDE4D3 that are required for the interaction with AKAP-Lbc. This high throughput methodology can be applied to screening factors that regulate protein-protein interaction.     

The MultiBac Protein Complex Production Platform at the EMBL

Proteomics research revealed the impressive complexity of eukaryotic proteomes in unprecedented detail. It is now a commonly accepted notion that proteins in cells mostly exist not as isolated entities but exert their biological activity in association with many other proteins, in humans ten or more, forming assembly lines in the cell for most if not all vital functions.^1,2 Knowledge of the function and architecture of these multiprotein assemblies requires their provision in superior quality and sufficient quantity for detailed analysis. The paucity of many protein complexes in cells, in particular in eukaryotes, prohibits their extraction from native sources, and necessitates recombinant production. The baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) has proven to be particularly useful for producing eukaryotic proteins, the activity of which often relies on post-translational processing that other commonly used expression systems often cannot support.³ BEVS use a recombinant baculovirus into which the gene of interest was inserted to infect insect cell cultures which in turn produce the protein of choice. MultiBac is a BEVS that has been particularly tailored for the production of eukaryotic protein complexes that contain many subunits.⁴ A vital prerequisite for efficient production of proteins and their complexes are robust protocols for all steps involved in an expression experiment that ideally can be implemented as standard operating procedures (SOPs) and followed also by non-specialist users with comparative ease. The MultiBac platform at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) uses SOPs for all steps involved in a multiprotein complex expression experiment, starting from insertion of the genes into an engineered baculoviral genome optimized for heterologous protein production properties to small-scale analysis of the protein specimens produced.^5-8 The platform is installed in an open-access mode at EMBL Grenoble and has supported many scientists from academia and industry to accelerate protein complex research projects.