| Literature DB >> 35558116 |
Chenglong Ma1,2, Chunyang Jiang2, Dongping Zhao2, Shuhao Li2, Ronggui Li1, Lei Li2.
Abstract
Directed evolution is a widely-used engineering strategy for improving the stabilities or biochemical functions of proteins by repeated rounds of mutation and selection. A protein of interest is selected as the template and expressed on a molecular display platform such as a bacteriophage for engineering. Initially, the surface-displayed protein template needs to be checked against the desired target via ELISA to examine whether the functions of the displayed template remain intact. The ELISA signal is subject to the protein-target binding affinity. A low-affinity results in a weak ELISA signal which makes it difficult to determine whether the weak signal is because of low affinity or because of poor expression of the protein. Using a methyllysine-binding chromodomain protein Cbx1 that weakly binds to the histone H3K9me3 peptide, we developed and compared three different approaches to increase the signal-to-background ratio of ELISA measurements. We observed that the specific peptide-binding signal was enhanced by increasing the Cbx1 phage concentration on the ELISA plate. The introduction of previously known gain-of-function mutations to the Cbx1 protein significantly increased the ELISA signals. Moreover, we demonstrated that the H3K9me3-specific binding signal was enhanced by fusing Cbx1 with a high-affinity phosphotyrosine-binding protein and by coating the ELISA plate with a mixture of H3K9me3 and phosphotyrosine peptides. This approach also worked with binding to a lower affinity momomethyllysine peptide H3K9me1. These approaches may help improve ELISA experiments when dealing with low-affinity ligand-protein interactions.Entities:
Keywords: ELISA; SH2; chromodomain; molecular display platform; phage display
Year: 2022 PMID: 35558116 PMCID: PMC9085562 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.899578
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Front Microbiol ISSN: 1664-302X Impact factor: 5.640
Figure 1Supernatant phage ELISA showed the expression level and binding to the pY (MidT-pY324) peptide of the Fyn SH2 domain (A) and the H3K9me3 peptide of Cbx1 (B), respectively. ELISA signals (OD450) are plotted as a function of the supernatant phages added to the streptavidin-coated wells conjugated with biotinylated modified peptides (pY or H3K9me3), unmodified counterparts (Y or H3K9) as negative controls and skim milk as the blank control, respectively. The anti-FLAG antibody (AB)-coated wells were taken as positive controls. The experiments were repeated three times and a statistical significance in comparison was calculated using unpaired two-sample t-test: ns: not significant; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01. The same statistical analysis was performed in the following figures.
Figure 2ELISA signals were plotted as a function of the Cbx1-containing phage with different phage concentrations added to the streptavidin-coated wells conjugated with biotinylated H3K9me3 or H3K9 peptides as the negative control. 1x concentration represents a solution with a phage concentration similar to the supernatant phage. The experiments were repeated three times.
Figure 3Supernatant phage ELISA showed the expression level and binding to the H3K9me3 peptide of the Cbx1 mutants. The milk and the H3K9 peptide were considered background and the negative control, respectively. The experiments were repeated three times. The experiments were repeated three times.
Figure 4Supernatant ELISA signals were plotted as a function of the Cbx1-and-FynSH2-containing phage binding to the mixtures of pY and H3K9me3 peptides with different ratios. The proportion of pY peptide in the mixtures ranged from 0 to 100%. The mixtures of pY and H3K9 peptides were taken as the negative control. The experiments were repeated three times.
Figure 5Phage ELISA showed the binding to the H3K9me1 peptide of the Cbx1 protein with different phage concentrations (A) or supernatant Cbx1-mutant-containing phages (B) or the binding of Cbx1-and-FynSH2-containing phage (C) to the mixtures of pY and H3K9me1 peptides with different ratios. The mixtures of pY and H3K9 peptides were considered as negative controls. The experiments were repeated three times.