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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter November 13, 2008

Applicability of superfolder YFP bimolecular fluorescence complementation in vitro

  • Corinna Ottmann , Michael Weyand , Alexander Wolf , Jürgen Kuhlmann and Christian Ottmann
From the journal Biological Chemistry

Abstract

Bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) using yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) is a widely employed method to study protein-protein interactions in cells. As yet, this technique has not been used in vitro. To evaluate a possible application of BiFC in vitro, we constructed a ‘superfolder split YFP’ system where 15 mutations enhance expression of the fusion proteins in Escherichia coli and enable a native purification due to improved solubility. Here, we present the crystal structure of ‘superfolder YFP’, providing the structural basis for the enhanced folding and stability characteristics. Complementation between the two non-fluorescent YFP fragments fused to HRas and Raf1RBD or to 14-3-3 and PMA2-CT52 resulted in the constitution of the functional fluorophore. The in vivo BiFC with these protein interaction pairs was demonstrated in eukaryotic cell lines as well. Here, we present for the first time BiFC in vitro studies with natively purified superfolder YFP fusion proteins and show the potential and drawbacks of this method for analyzing protein-protein interactions.


a

Deceased.

Corresponding author

Received: 2008-9-4
Accepted: 2008-10-1
Published Online: 2008-11-13
Published in Print: 2009-01-01

©2009 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin New York

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