New reporters of protein trafficking and protein-protein interactions in live cells

Here, we describe our attempts to harness the exquisite specificity of natural protein and RNA enzymes to develop improved methods to study protein localization and protein-protein interactions in live cells. We first attempted to detect endogenous protein-protein interactions (PPIs) in live cells by means of a ribozyme complementation assay, but we found that the strategy was limited by the interaction affinity constraints and by low ribozyme activity in cells. We then sought to still detect interactions among endogenous proteins but in fixed cells. We devised an improved immunofluorescence (IF) technique, in which the antibodies are conjugated to an enzyme-substrate pair. We chose E. coli biotin ligase (BirA), which catalyzes the covalent ligation of biotin to a 15amino acid recognition sequence (AP). Only upon PPI would BirA be in close enough proximity to biotinylate the AP. Although the use of proximity biotinylation within the IF scheme proved challenging because of the geometric rigidity of the antibody conjugates, we later successfully applied the concept to the study of recombinant proteins in live cells, where BirA and AP were each genetically fused to the proteins of interest. We demonstrated that this method offers a combination of high spatial and temporal resolution with a low rate of false positives. We engineered the BirA/AP affinity to reduce background and eliminate false positives, while still allowing robust detection of relatively transient PPIs (half-life > 1 minute). We demonstrated that the methodology exhibits high specificity for the detection of PPIs in living mammalian cells, with a fold induction in the detected signal upon PPI of - 5-25. Using FRB-FKBP12 system as a model, the BirA/AP(-3) pair was also able to quantitatively predict interaction KIds.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemistry.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Fernández Suárez, Marta

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alice Y. Ting.

• Chemistry.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44678

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/44678