Development of protein crystallization tag using crystalline lattice

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K13747
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Bio-related chemistry
• Research Institution: The University of Tokushima
• Principal Investigator: MAITA Nobuo 徳島大学, 先端酵素学研究所(次世代), 准教授 (00404046)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: タンパク質結晶構造解析 / 結晶工学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Crystal structure analysis of protein requires several hundreds of crystallization conditions screening to obtain high quality crystals, which is the most important bottleneck. I focused on proteins that make a porous crystal lattice and developed a method of genetic engineering fusion of guest proteins to the crystal lattice as it is to obtain its crystal structure. Eight proteins were selected as fusion guests to R1EN, which assembles a honeycomb lattice with an inner diameter of 11 nm. I prepared ubiquitin fusions (R1EN-Ub) with different linker lengths, and successfully crystallized under the same conditions as R1EN alone. I succeeded in structural analysis of three ubiquitin constructs. I could demonstrated the effectiveness of this R1EN fusion method.

Free Research Field

構造生物化学