One single method to produce native and Tat-fused recombinant human α-synuclein in Escherichia coli

BMC Biotechnology

Laura Caldinelli¹  Diego Albani²  Loredano Pollegioni¹ 

[1] The Protein Factory, Centro Interuniversitario di Biotecnologie Proteiche, Politecnico di Milano, ICRM – CNR Milano, and Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, via Mancinelli 7, Milano, Italy

[2] Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Unità di Genetica delle Malattie Neurodegenerative, IRCCS - Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, via La Masa 19, Milano, Italy

关键词: Protein aggregation;    Oxidative stress;    Parkinson’s disease;    Recombinant proteins;    TAT-fusion protein;    α-Synuclein;   

Others  :  1123182
DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6750-13-32

 received in 2012-09-19, accepted in 2013-03-25,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

Human α-synuclein is a small-sized, natively unfolded protein that in fibrillar form is the primary component of Lewy bodies, the pathological hallmark of Parkinson’s disease. Experimental evidence suggests that α-synuclein aggregation is the key event that triggers neurotoxicity although additional findings have proposed a protective role of α-synuclein against oxidative stress. One way to address the mechanism of this protective action is to evaluate α-synuclein-mediated protection by delivering this protein inside cells using a chimeric protein fused with the Tat-transduction domain of HIV Tat, named TAT-α-synuclein.

Results

A reliable protocol was designed to efficiently express and purify two different forms of human α-synuclein. The synthetic cDNAs encoding for the native α-synuclein and the fusion protein with the transduction domain of Tat protein from HIV were overexpressed in a BL21(DE3) E. coli strain as His-tagged proteins. The recombinant proteins largely localized (≥ 85%) to the periplasmic space. By using a quick purification protocol, based on recovery of periplasmic space content and metal-chelating chromatography, the recombinant α-synuclein protein forms could be purified in a single step to ≥ 95% purity. Both α-synuclein recombinant proteins form fibrils and the TAT-α-synuclein is also cytotoxic in the micromolar concentration range.

Conclusions

To further characterize the molecular mechanisms of α-synuclein neurotoxicity both in vitro and in vivo and to evaluate the relevance of extracellular α-synuclein for the pathogenesis and progression of Parkinson’s disease, a suitable method to produce different high-quality forms of this pathological protein is required. Our optimized expression and purification procedure offers an easier and faster means of producing different forms (i.e., both the native and the TAT-fusion form) of soluble recombinant α-synuclein than previously described procedures.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Caldinelli et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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