Salt-Dependent Conditional Protein Splicing of an Intein from Halobacterium salinarum.

Julie N Reitter, Christopher E Cousin, Michael C Nicastri, Mario V Jaramillo, Kenneth V Mills

Biochemistry 2016 Mar 8

filter terms:

An intein from Halobacterium salinarum can be isolated as an unspliced precursor protein with exogenous exteins after Escherichia coli overexpression. The intein promotes protein splicing and uncoupled N-terminal cleavage in vitro, conditional on incubation with NaCl or KCl at concentrations of >1.5 M. The protein splicing reaction also is conditional on reduction of a disulfide bond between two active site cysteines. Conditional protein splicing under these relatively mild conditions may lead to advances in intein-based biotechnology applications and hints at the possibility that this H. salinarum intein could serve as a switch to control extein activity under physiologically relevant conditions.

Citation

Julie N Reitter, Christopher E Cousin, Michael C Nicastri, Mario V Jaramillo, Kenneth V Mills. Salt-Dependent Conditional Protein Splicing of an Intein from Halobacterium salinarum. Biochemistry. 2016 Mar 8;55(9):1279-82