Abstract
Many proteins are prone to aggregate or insoluble for different reasons. This poses an extraordinary challenge at the expression level, but even more during downstream purification processes. Here we describe a strategy that we developed for purifying prone-to-aggregate proteins. Our methodology can be easily implemented in small laboratories without the need for automated, expensive platforms. This procedure is especially suitable for intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and for proteins with intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs). Such proteins are likely to aggregate due to their lack of tertiary structure and their extended and flexible conformations. Similar methodologies can be applied to other proteins with comparable tendency to aggregate during the expression or purification steps.
In this chapter, we will mainly focus on protein solubility and stability issues during purification and storage, on factors that can prevent aggregation or maintain solubility, and on the importance of the early elimination of aggregates during protein purification.
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Acknowledgment
AF is supported by a starting grant from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC Grant agreement n° 203413 and by the Minerva Center for Bio-Hybrid complex systems.
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Lebendiker, M., Maes, M., Friedler, A. (2015). A Screening Methodology for Purifying Proteins with Aggregation Problems. In: García-Fruitós, E. (eds) Insoluble Proteins. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1258. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2205-5_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2205-5_14
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