Demonstration of dimer formation of the cytoplasmic domain of a transmembrane osmosensor protein, EnvZ, of Escherichia coli using Ni-histidine tag affinity chromatography.

EnvZ is a transmembrane osmosensor which regulates the phosphorylation of OmpR, a transcription factor for ompF and ompC genes which encode the major outer membrane porin proteins, OmpF and OmpC in Escherichia coli. Autophosphorylation of EnvZ occurs through a transphosphorylation reaction between two EnvZ molecules. To elucidate the molecular mechanism of signal transduction by EnvZ, we examined the dimer formation of the EnvZ cytoplasmic domain [EnvZ(C)]. For this purpose, we developed a method to determine the complex formation between the purified EnvZ(C) and the purified His6-EnvZ(C) by means of Ni-6xhistidine tag affinity chromatography. When the mixture of EnvZ(C) and His6-EnvZ(C) was applied to Ni-NTA resin, both His6-EnvZ(C) and EnvZ(C) were bound to the resin, indicating that EnvZ can form an oligomer without the periplasmic and transmembrane domains. Binding experiments using the Ni-NTA resin revealed that EnvZ(C) forms a dimer with the Ka value for dimerization being approximately 10(5) M(-1) in the equilibrium state.