Part:BBa_K3185001
Tm Encapsulin
Usage and Biology
TmEncapsulin is a protein found from Thermotoga maritima. A paper says that it consists of 60 monomers and forms capsule, Virus-like particle(VLP) [1]. iGEM also treats it as a useful part (BBa_K192000).
We used TmEncapsulin as biological polymer, because it consists of 60 monomers. This part has three tag sites. First is 6x-His tag placed in the C-terminus of TmEncapsulin for protein purification by using Ni-NTA beads. However, in a paper, Ni-NTA beads cannot bind to 6x-His tag added in C-terminus because it doesn’t display enough to the surface of the protein capsule [2]. To solve this problem, we inserted second tag. Second is HAtag inserted between TmEncapsulin and 6x-His tag in expectation of C-terminus to display on the surface of the capsule. Third is 6x-His-tag and linker inserted between #43 and #44 amino acids of native encapsulin for improving heat-resistance of TmEncapsulin. To design third one, we refered BBa_K2686002 of iGEM EPFL 2018 and the same paper (BBa_K2686002).
We put it between BamHI site and Ndel site on pET11-a. The expression plasmids were introduced into BL21(DE3) and expressed by T7 promoter/ T7 RNAP system. Ni-NTA agarose was used for the purification.
Sequence and Features
- 10COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[10]
- 12COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[12]
- 21INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[21]Illegal BglII site found at 77
Illegal BglII site found at 492 - 23COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[23]
- 25COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[25]
- 1000INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[1000]Illegal SapI.rc site found at 426
Illegal SapI.rc site found at 457
Purification
Expression
- Cells were grown in 200ml LB media (100μg/ml Ampicillin) at 37oC shaking at 140 rpm to an OD600 of 0.5, verifying via a spectrophotometer.
- Protein was expressed in 0.1mM IPTG for 2hours.
Purification
1. E. coli which expressed this part were lysed with sonification.
2. Proteins are purified from lysate with Ni-NTA agarose(QIAGEN).
3. Imidazole eluates were visualized and confirmed by SDS-PAGE followed by CBB staining.
This purification method works. As shown in Fig.1, the protein successfully purified.
Result
TmEncapsulin expressed E. coli lysate and purified protein solution was loaded on 10%-60% sucrose linear gradient / 20 mM Tris 7.5, 50 mM NaCl, then centrifuged in 100,000g for 18 hours at 4℃ with SW41(Beckman). The solution was fractionated on a 96-well plate with BioComp. At the same time, 260nm absorption was measured.
3µL of SpyCatcher-Plastic-binding protein (SpyC-PBP) solution and 3µL of SpyTag inserted TmEncapsulin (SpyTmEnc) solution was mixed, then placed for 16h at room temperature. Then 6µL of 2x SDS sample buffer was added. 10µL of each sample was loaded. SDS-PAGE for 30min in 200V. The gel was CBB stained.
Encapsulin properly make spherical polymer
We assessed the size of the protein polymer.
The TmEncapsulin purified and eluted from Ni-NTA was loaded on the top of 10%-60% linear sucrose gradient. The samples were ultracentrifuged in 100,000g for 18 hours at 4℃ with SW41(Beckman) and fractionated on a 96-well plate with BioComp. Absorbance 260 nm was monitored.
In Fig. 2, the blue line shows A260 of E. coli lysate (control). As shown in the figure, bacterial ribosomes are observed as peaks in the indicated position. The red line shows the A260 profile of eluted TmEncapsulin. Around the 60th fraction, a peak was clearly observed. As TmEncapsulin polymer’s size is 20 nm and the 70S bacterial ribosome’s size is also about 20 nm, this peak around 60th fraction looks exactly the TmEncapsulin spherical polymer. Interestingly, the first drop of the fractionation (the top of the fraction) was around 10 (signals between 1-9 can be attributed to air bubbles), showing that most of the A260 signal in the purified TmEncapsulin were collected in 70S-80S area, with almost no accumulation of monomer form.
In order to confirm that the 60th fraction’s peak result from TmEncapsulin, we examined the fraction with SDS-PAGE. In Fig.3, lane1 is TmEncapsulin expressed E. coli lysate, lane 2 is purified protein, and lane 3 is 60th fraction. As shown in lane 3, the 60th fraction properly has encapsulin. Taken together, we concluded that our TmEncapsulin conserves the spherical structure.
Protein conjugation thorough SpyCatcher/SpyTag system
The equal amount of SpyCatcher-Plastic-binding protein (SpyC-PBP) solution and SpyTag inserted TmEncapsulin (SpyTmEnc) solution were mixed and incubated for 16h at room temperature. Samples were taken and assessed with SDS-PAGE. We used TmEncapsulin as negative control of SpyTmEnc (BBa_K3185000).
In Fig. 4, several kinds of combinations of proteins were shown. In lane 4 and 5, SpyTmEnc is loaded with or without SpyC. Only in lane 5, which is mixed with SpyC, the upper band appeared. The molecular weight of each protein is SpyC: 15.37k, SpyTmEnc: 37.04k, so the conjugated protein should be 52.41k. We concluded that the upper band is the conjugated protein. Likewise, as shown in lane 7 and 9, SpyC-PBPs are successfully conjugated to SpyTmEnc. As the negative control, we tested TmEncapsulin without SpyTag. As expected, TmEnc and SpyC did not produce conjugated protein as shown in lane 3.
These results show we successfully conjugated several proteins to Encapsulin by SpyTag-SpyCatcher system in vitro. This means that any protein with SpyCatcher can be efficiently and easily displayed on the surface of the protein capsule.
References
1 Lukarska, M., Fournier, G., Pflug, A., Resa-Infante, P., Reich, S., Naffakh, N., and Cusack, S. (2017).
Structural basis of an essential interaction between influenza polymerase and Pol II CTD.
Nature 541, 117–121.
2 Moon, H., Lee, J., Min, J., and Kang, S. (2014).
Developing genetically engineered encapsulin protein cage nanoparticles as a targeted delivery nanoplatform.
Biomacromolecules 15, 3794–3801.
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