Sequence context and crosslinking mechanism affect the efficiency of in vivo capture of a protein-protein interaction.

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are essential for implementing cellular processes and thus methods for the discovery and study of PPIs are highly desirable. An emerging method for capturing PPIs in their native cellular environment is in vivo covalent chemical capture, a method that uses nonsense suppression to site specifically incorporate photoactivable unnatural amino acids (UAAs) in living cells. However, in one study we found that this method did not capture a PPI for which there was abundant functional evidence, a complex formed between the transcriptional activator Gal4 and its repressor protein Gal80. Here we describe the factors that influence the success of covalent chemical capture and show that the innate reactivity of the two UAAs utilized, (p-benzoylphenylalanine (pBpa) and p-azidophenylalanine (pAzpa)), plays a profound role in the capture of Gal80 by Gal4. Based upon these data, guidelines are outlined for the successful use of in vivo photo-crosslinking to capture novel PPIs and to characterize the interfaces.

Caught in the act: covalent cross-linking captures activator-coactivator interactions in vivo.

Currently there are few methods suitable for the discovery and characterization of transient, moderate affinity protein-protein interactions in their native environment, despite their prominent role in a host of cellular functions including protein folding, signal transduction, and transcriptional activation. Here we demonstrate that a genetically encoded photoactivatable amino acid, p-benzoyl-l-phenylalanine, can be used to capture transient and/or low affinity binding partners in an in vivo setting. In this study, we focused on ensnaring the coactivator binding partners of the transcriptional activator VP16 in S. cerevisiae. The interactions between transcriptional activators and coactivators in eukaryotes are moderate in affinity and short-lived, and due in part to these characteristics, identification of the direct binding partners of activators in vivo has met with only limited success. We find through in vivo photo-cross-linking that VP16 contacts the Swi/Snf chromatin-remodeling complex through the ATPase Snf2(BRG1/BRM) and the subunit Snf5 with two distinct regions of the activation domain. An analogous experiment with Gal4 reveals that Snf2 is also a target of this activator. These results suggest that Snf2 may be a valuable target for small molecule probe discovery given the prominent role the Swi/Snf complex family plays in development and in disease. More significantly, the successful implementation of the in vivo cross-linking methodology in this setting demonstrates that it can be applied to the discovery and characterization of a broad range of transient and/or modest affinity protein-protein interactions.

Impact of nonnatural amino acid mutagenesis on the in vivo function and binding modes of a transcriptional activator.

Protein-protein interactions play an essential role in cellular function, and methods to discover and characterize them in their native context are of paramount importance for gaining a deeper understanding of biological networks. In this study, an enhanced nonsense suppression system was utilized to incorporate the nonnatural amino acid p-benzoyl-L-phenylalanine (pBpa) throughout the transcriptional activation domain of the prototypical eukaryotic transcriptional activator Gal4 in vivo (S. cerevisiae). Functional studies of the pBpa-containing Gal4 mutants suggest that this essential binding interface of Gal4 is minimally impacted by these substitutions, with both transcriptional activity and sensitivity to growth conditions maintained. Further supporting this are in vivo cross-linking studies, including the detection of a key binding partner of Gal4, the inhibitor protein Gal80. Cross-linking with a range of pBpa-containing mutants revealed a Gal4 x Gal80 binding interface that extends beyond that previously predicted by conventional strategies. Thus, this approach can be broadened to the discovery of novel binding partners of transcription factors, information that will be critical for the development of therapeutically useful small molecule modulators of these protein-protein interactions.