title: Salt-Dependent Aggregation and Assembly of E coli-Expressed Ferritin.
abstract: Ferritin, with the primary function of iron storage, is a nearly ubiquitous protein found in most living organisms. Our recent investigations suggest that ferritin can assemble nanoparticles. So we use ferritin as a novel type of delivery vehicle for recombinant epitope vaccines. And, we found that ferritin form nonnative aggregates depended sensitively on NaCl concentrations. Here, we report that ferritin is an ion-sensitive protein and has the attribute of salt-dependent aggregation. Our results indicate that recombinant ferritin can be released as a soluble form from Escherichia coli at low NaCl concentrations (≤50 mmol/L). Moreover, this result affords us to confirm a proper self-assembling solution for soluble ferritin or other ferritin-based fusion proteins to assemble nanoparticles.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, College of Basic Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, College of Basic Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Chengfeng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jiao
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, College of Basic Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, College of Basic Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Luowei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, College of Basic Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, College of Basic Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Jialin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, College of Basic Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Yongli
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, College of Basic Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Liying
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
keywords: aggregation; ferritin; nanoparticles; salt-dependent; self-assembling