title: Preventing protein aggregation by its hyper-acidic fusion cognates in Escherichia coli.
abstract: Preventing protein aggregation is crucial for various protein studies, and has a large potential for remedy of protein misfolding or aggregates-linked diseases. In this study, we demonstrated the hyper-acidic protein fusion partners, which were previously reported to enhance the soluble expression of aggregation-prone proteins, could also significantly prevent aggregation (or improve the solubility) of disease-associated and amyloid/fibril-forming polypeptides such as TEL-SAM and Aβ42 in Escherichia coli cells. Further and most importantly, the solubility of all poorly soluble target proteins examined was greatly elevated by their corresponding highly soluble hyper-acidic fusion cognates when they were co-expressed, in despite of a concomitant compromise of the cognates' solubility. The extent of such a solubility enhancement appeared to be in parallel with the ratio of the levels of co-expressed hyper-acidic fusion cognate and target protein. The hyper-acidic fusion cognates might function as intermolecular solubilizing effectors to prevent aggregation of the target proteins, and a plausible model for interpreting these results is also proposed.
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Yunnan Normal University, YiErYi Street 298, 650092 Kunming, China.
authors.forename: Zhurong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.forename: Yunliu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Chunyi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000143:Acids / Q000737:chemistry; D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics*; D015870:Gene Expression; D010446:Peptide Fragments / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D017510:Protein Folding; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D012995:Solubility
chemical_list: D000143:Acids; D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides; D010446:Peptide Fragments; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins; C075222:amyloid beta-protein (1-42)