A Handle-Free, All-Protein-Based Optical Tweezers Method to Probe Protein Folding-Unfolding Dynamics.
Langmuir
; 40(26): 13721-13727, 2024 Jul 02.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38899455
ABSTRACT
Optical tweezers (OT) have evolved into powerful single molecule force spectroscopy tools to investigate protein folding-unfolding dynamics. To stretch a protein of interest using OT, the protein must be flanked with two double stranded DNA (dsDNA) handles. However, coupling dsDNA handles to the protein is often of low yield, representing a bottleneck in OT experiments. Here, we report a handle-free, all-protein-based OT method for investigating protein folding/unfolding dynamics. In this new method, we employed disordered elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) as a molecular linker and the mechanically stable cohesin-dockerin (Coh-Doc) pair as the prey-bait system to enable the efficient capture and stretching of individual protein molecules. This novel approach was validated by using model proteins NuG2 and RTX-v, yielding experimental results comparable to those obtained by using the dsDNA handle approach. This new method provides a streamlined and efficient OT approach to investigate the folding-unfolding dynamics of proteins at the single molecule level, thus expanding the toolbox of OT-based single molecule force spectroscopy.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Protein Folding
/
Optical Tweezers
Language:
En
Journal:
Langmuir
Journal subject:
QUIMICA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Canadá