Expression and purification of a recombinant LL-37 from Escherichia coli.
Human cathelicidin-derived LL-37 is a 37-residue cationic, amphipathic alpha-helical peptide. It is an active component of mammalian innate immunity. LL-37 has several biological functions including a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activities and LPS-neutralizing activity. In order to determine the high-resolution three-dimensional structure of LL-37 using NMR spectroscopy, it is important to obtain the peptide with isotopic labels such as (15)N, (13)C and/or (2)H. Since it is less expensive to obtain such a peptide biologically, in this study, we report for the first time a method to express in E. coli and purify LL-37 using Glutathione S-transferase (GST) fusion system. LL-37 gene was inserted into vector pGEX-4T3 and expressed as a GST-LL-37 fusion protein in BL21(DE3) strain. The recombinant GST-LL-37 protein was purified with a yield of 8 mg/l by affinity chromatography and analyzed its biochemical and spectroscopic properties. Factor Xa was used to cleave a 4.5-kDa LL-37 from the GST-LL-37 fusion protein and the peptide was purified using a reverse-phase HPLC on a Vydac C(18) column with a final yield of 0.3 mg/l. The protein purified using reverse-phase HPLC was confirmed to be LL-37 by the analyses of Western blot and MALDI-TOF-Mass spectrometry. E. coli cells harboring the expression vector pGEX-4T3-LL-37 were grown in the presence of the (15)N-labeled M9 minimal medium and culture conditions were optimized to obtain uniform (15)N enrichment in the constitutively expressed LL-37 peptide. These results suggest that our production method will be useful in obtaining a large quantity of recombinant LL-37 peptide for NMR studies.
Department of Chemistry and Biophysics Research Division, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1055, USA.
Ja-Young
JY
Moon
Katherine A
KA
Henzler-Wildman
A
A
Ramamoorthy
D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism*; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D004591:Electrophoresis, Polyacrylamide Gel; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism*; D005822:Genetic Vectors; D019906:Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Biomolecular; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism; D019032:Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization; D054804:Cathelicidins
D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; D054804:Cathelicidins