Histone deacetylase 5 regulates the inflammatory response of macrophages.

Modifying the chromatin structure and interacting with non-histone proteins, histone deacetylases (HDAC) are involved in vital cellular processes at different levels. We here specifically investigated the direct effects of HDAC5 in macrophage activation in response to bacterial or cytokine stimuli. Using murine and human macrophage cell lines, we studied the expression profile and the immunological function of HDAC5 at transcription and protein level in over-expression as well as RNA interference experiments. Toll-like receptor-mediated stimulation of murine RAW264.7 cells significantly reduced HDAC5 mRNA within 7 hrs but presented baseline levels after 24 hrs, a mechanism that was also found for Interferon-γ treatment. If treated with lipopolysaccharide, RAW264.7 cells transfected for over-expression only of full-length but not of mutant HDAC5, significantly elevated secretion of tumour necrosis factor α and of the monocyte chemotactic protein-1. These effects were accompanied by increased nuclear factor-κB activity. Accordingly, knock down of HDAC5-mRNA expression using specific siRNA significantly reduced the production of these cytokines in RAW264.7 or human U937 cells. Taken together, our results suggest a strong regulatory function of HDAC5 in the pro-inflammatory response of macrophages.

High-throughput protein expression using a combination of ligation-independent cloning (LIC) and infrared fluorescent protein (IFP) detection.

Protein expression in heterologous hosts for functional studies is a cumbersome effort. Here, we report a superior platform for parallel protein expression in vivo and in vitro. The platform combines highly efficient ligation-independent cloning (LIC) with instantaneous detection of expressed proteins through N- or C-terminal fusions to infrared fluorescent protein (IFP). For each open reading frame, only two PCR fragments are generated (with three PCR primers) and inserted by LIC into ten expression vectors suitable for protein expression in microbial hosts, including Escherichia coli, Kluyveromyces lactis, Pichia pastoris, the protozoon Leishmania tarentolae, and an in vitro transcription/translation system. Accumulation of IFP-fusion proteins is detected by infrared imaging of living cells or crude protein extracts directly after SDS-PAGE without additional processing. We successfully employed the LIC-IFP platform for in vivo and in vitro expression of ten plant and fungal proteins, including transcription factors and enzymes. Using the IFP reporter, we additionally established facile methods for the visualisation of protein-protein interactions and the detection of DNA-transcription factor interactions in microtiter and gel-free format. We conclude that IFP represents an excellent reporter for high-throughput protein expression and analysis, which can be easily extended to numerous other expression hosts using the setup reported here.