2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Structural studies on mechanism of amino acid exporting system in Corynebacterium glutamicum

Research Project

Project/Area Number	24880011
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Applied microbiology
Research Institution	The University of Tokyo
Principal Investigator	YOSHIDA Ayako 東京大学, 生物生産工学研究センター, 特任助教 (90633686)
Project Period (FY)	2012-08-31 – 2014-03-31
Keywords	メカノセンシティブチャネル / グルタミン酸発酵 / コリネバクテリウム　グルタミカム / 膜タンパク質 / X線結晶構造解析
Research Abstract	Corynebacterium glutamicum is a bacterium for glutamate fermentation. Recently, the mechanosensitive channel, NCgl1221 is uncovered to be responsible for the export of glutamate and is important for the glutamate fermentation. To elucidate the mechanism of glutamate exporting system in C. glutamicum structurally, we performed the crystallographic analysis of NCgl1221 We constructed the expression system of NCgl1221 in Escherichia coli and we could successfully obtain purified NCgl1221. After crystallization screening, protein crystals appeared in several conditions. Although the resolution was poore, we could observe the good diffraction patterns from the crystals obtained in the optimized crystallization condition.