Expression, stabilization and purification of membrane proteins via diverse protein synthesis systems and detergents involving cell-free associated with self-assembly peptide surfactants

Strategies for the Purification of Membrane Proteins

Membrane proteins account for approximately 30% of the coding regions of all sequenced genomes, and they play crucial roles in many fundamental cell processes. However, there are relatively few membrane proteins with known three-dimensional structures. This is likely due to technical challenges associated with membrane protein extraction, solubilization, and purification. Membrane proteins are classified based on the level of interaction with membrane lipid bilayers, with peripheral membrane proteins associating non-covalently with the membrane, and integral membrane proteins associating more strongly by means of hydrophobic interactions. Generally speaking, peripheral membrane proteins can be purified by milder techniques than integral membrane proteins, with the latter's extraction requiring phospholipid bilayer disruption using detergents or organic solvents. In this chapter, important considerations for membrane protein purification are addressed, with a focus on the initial stages of membrane protein solubilization, where problems are most frequently encountered. Protocols are outlined for the extraction of peripheral membrane proteins, solubilization of integral membrane proteins, and sample clean-up and concentration.

Real-Time Monitoring the Staged Interactions between Cationic Surfactants and a Phospholipid Bilayer Membrane

The cationic surfactant-lipid interaction directs the development of novel types of nanodrugs or nanocarriers. The membrane action of cationic surfactants also has a wide range of applications. In this work,...

Advances in the study of GPCRs by 19F NMR

Crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy have advanced atomic resolution perspectives of inactive and active states of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), alone and in complex with G proteins or arrestin. ¹⁹F NMR can play a role in ascertaining activation mechanisms and understanding the complete energy landscape associated with signal transduction. Fluorinated reporters are introduced biosynthetically via fluorinated amino acid analogs or chemically, via thiol-specific fluorinated reporters. The chemical shift sensitivity of these reporters makes it possible to discern details of conformational ensembles. In addition to spectroscopic details, paramagnetic species can be incorporated through orthogonal techniques to obtain distance information on fluorinated reporters, while T₂-and T₁-based relaxation experiments provide details on exchange kinetics in addition to fluctuations within a given state.

Strategies for Optimizing the Production of Proteins and Peptides with Multiple Disulfide Bonds

Bacteria can produce recombinant proteins quickly and cost effectively. However, their physiological properties limit their use for the production of proteins in their native form, especially polypeptides that are subjected to major post-translational modifications. Proteins that rely on disulfide bridges for their stability are difficult to produce in Escherichia coli. The bacterium offers the least costly, simplest, and fastest method for protein production. However, it is difficult to produce proteins with a very large size. Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia pastoris are the most commonly used yeast species for protein production. At a low expense, yeasts can offer high protein yields, generate proteins with a molecular weight greater than 50 kDa, extract signal sequences, and glycosylate proteins. Both eukaryotic and prokaryotic species maintain reducing conditions in the cytoplasm. Hence, the formation of disulfide bonds is inhibited. These bonds are formed in eukaryotic cells during the export cycle, under the oxidizing conditions of the endoplasmic reticulum. Bacteria do not have an advanced subcellular space, but in the oxidizing periplasm, they exhibit both export systems and enzymatic activities directed at the formation and quality of disulfide bonds. Here, we discuss current techniques used to target eukaryotic and prokaryotic species for the generation of correctly folded proteins with disulfide bonds.

Smoothing membrane protein structure determination by initial upstream stage improvements

Membrane proteins (MP) constitute 20–30% of all proteins encoded by the genome of various organisms and perform a wide range of essential biological functions. However, despite they represent the largest class of protein drug targets, a relatively small number high-resolution 3D structures have been obtained yet. Membrane protein biogenesis is more complex than that of the soluble proteins and its recombinant biosynthesis has been a major drawback, thus delaying their further structural characterization. Indeed, the major limitation in structure determination of MP is the low yield achieved in recombinant expression, usually coupled to low functionality, pinpointing the optimization target in recombinant MP research. Recently, the growing attention that have been dedicated to the upstream stage of MP bioprocesses allowed great advances, permitting the evolution of the number of MP solved structures. In this review, we analyse and discuss effective solutions and technical advances at the level of the upstream stage using prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms foreseeing an increase in expression yields of correctly folded MP and that may facilitate the determination of their three-dimensional structure. A section on techniques used to protein quality control and further structure determination of MP is also included. Lastly, a critical assessment of major factors contributing for a good decision-making process related to the upstream stage of MP is presented.

Opportunities for therapeutic antibodies directed at G-protein-coupled receptors

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are activated by a diverse range of ligands, from large proteins and proteases to small peptides, metabolites, neurotransmitters and ions. They are expressed on all cells in the body and have key roles in physiology and homeostasis. As such, GPCRs are one of the most important target classes for therapeutic drug discovery. The development of drugs targeting GPCRs has therapeutic value across a wide range of diseases, including cancer, immune and inflammatory disorders as well as neurological and metabolic diseases. The progress made by targeting GPCRs with antibody-based therapeutics, as well as technical hurdles to overcome, are presented and discussed in this Review. Antibody therapeutics targeting C-C chemokine receptor type 4 (CCR4), CCR5 and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) are used as illustrative clinical case studies.

Production of G protein-coupled receptors in an insect-based cell-free system

The biochemical analysis of human cell membrane proteins remains a challenging task due to the difficulties in producing sufficient quantities of functional protein. G protein‐coupled receptors (GPCRs) represent a main class of membrane proteins and drug targets, which are responsible for a huge number of signaling processes regulating various physiological functions in living cells. To circumvent the current bottlenecks in GPCR studies, we propose the synthesis of GPCRs in eukaryotic cell‐free systems based on extracts generated from insect (Sf21) cells. Insect cell lysates harbor the fully active translational and translocational machinery allowing posttranslational modifications, such as glycosylation and phosphorylation of de novo synthesized proteins. Here, we demonstrate the production of several GPCRs in a eukaryotic cell‐free system, performed within a short time and in a cost‐effective manner. We were able to synthesize a variety of GPCRs ranging from 40 to 133 kDa in an insect‐based cell‐free system. Moreover, we have chosen the μ opioid receptor (MOR) as a model protein to analyze the ligand binding affinities of cell‐free synthesized MOR in comparison to MOR expressed in a human cell line by “one‐point” radioligand binding experiments. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2017;114: 2328–2338. © 2017 The Authors. Biotechnology and Bioengineering Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Strategies for the Purification of Membrane Proteins

Although membrane proteins account for approximately 30 % of the coding regions of all sequenced genomes and play crucial roles in many fundamental cell processes, there are relatively few membranes with known 3D structure. This is likely due to technical challenges associated with membrane protein extraction, solubilization, and purification. Membrane proteins are classified based on the level of interaction with membrane lipid bilayers, with peripheral membrane proteins associating noncovalently with the membrane, and integral membrane proteins associating more strongly by means of hydrophobic interactions. Generally speaking, peripheral membrane proteins can be purified by milder techniques than integral membrane proteins, whose extraction require phospholipid bilayer disruption by detergents. Here, important criteria for strategies of membrane protein purification are addressed, with a focus on the initial stages of membrane protein solublilization, where problems are most frequently are encountered. Protocols are outlined for the successful extraction of peripheral membrane proteins, solubilization of integral membrane proteins, and detergent removal which is important not only for retaining native protein stability and biological functions, but also for the efficiency of downstream purification techniques.

Engineering therapeutic antibodies targeting G-protein-coupled receptors

G-protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) are one of the most attractive therapeutic target classes because of their critical roles in intracellular signaling and their clinical relevance to a variety of diseases, including cancer, infection and inflammation. However, high conformational variability, the small exposed area of extracellular epitopes and difficulty in the preparation of GPCR antigens have delayed both the isolation of therapeutic anti-GPCR antibodies as well as studies on the structure, function and biochemical mechanisms of GPCRs. To overcome the challenges in generating highly specific anti-GPCR antibodies with enhanced efficacy and safety, various forms of antigens have been successfully designed and employed for screening with newly emerged systems based on laboratory animal immunization and high-throughput-directed evolution.

Cell-Free Expression of G Protein-Coupled Receptors

The large-scale production of recombinant G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is one of the major bottlenecks that hamper functional and structural studies of this important class of integral membrane proteins. Heterologous overexpression of GPCRs often results in low yields of active protein, usually due to a combination of several factors, such as low expression levels, protein insolubility, host cell toxicity, and the need to use harsh and often denaturing detergents (e.g., SDS, LDAO, OG, and DDM, among others) to extract the recombinant receptor from the host cell membrane. Many of these problematic issues are inherently linked to cell-based expression systems and can therefore be circumvented by the use of cell-free systems. In this unit, we provide a range of protocols for the production of GPCRs in a cell-free expression system. Using this system, we typically obtain GPCR expression levels of ∼1 mg per ml of reaction mixture in the continuous-exchange configuration. Although the protocols in this unit have been optimized for the cell-free expression of GPCRs, they should provide a good starting point for the production of other classes of membrane proteins, such as ion channels, aquaporins, carrier proteins, membrane-bound enzymes, and even large molecular complexes.

Labeling of membrane proteins by cell-free expression

The particular advantage of the cell-free reaction is that it allows a plethora of supplementation during protein expression and offers complete control over the available amino acid pool in view of concentration and composition. In combination with the fast and reliable production efficiencies of cell-free systems, the labeling and subsequent structural evaluation of very challenging targets, such as membrane proteins, comes into focus. We describe current methods for the isotopic labeling of cell-free synthesized membrane proteins and we review techniques available to the practitioner pursuing structural studies by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Though isotopic labeling of individual amino acid types appears to be relatively straightforward, an ongoing critical issue in most labeling schemes for structural approaches is the selective substitution of deuterons for protons. While few options are available, the continuous refinement of labeling schemes in combination with improved pulse sequences and optimized instrumentation gives promising perspectives for extended applications in the structural evaluation of cell-free synthesized membrane.

Membrane protein production in Escherichia coli cell-free lysates

Cell-free protein production has become a core technology in the rapidly spreading field of synthetic biology. In particular the synthesis of membrane proteins, highly problematic proteins in conventional cellular production systems, is an ideal application for cell-free expression. A large variety of artificial as well as natural environments for the optimal co-translational folding and stabilization of membrane proteins can rationally be designed. The high success rate of cell-free membrane protein production allows to focus on individually selected targets and to modulate their functional and structural properties with appropriate supplements. The efficiency and robustness of lysates from Escherichia coli strains allow a wide diversity of applications and we summarize current strategies for the successful production of high quality membrane protein samples.