An optimized Npro-based method for the expression and purification of intrinsically disordered proteins for an NMR study

Abstract

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are an emerging concept. IDPs have high flexibility in their polypeptide chains, lacking a stable 3-dimensional structure. Because of the difficulty in performing X-ray crystallography for IDPs, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is the first choice for atomic-level investigation of their nature. Given that isotopically labeled IDP samples are necessary for NMR study, a robust and cost-effective protocol for bacterial expression and purification of IDP is also needed. We employed the Npro (EDDIE)-autoprotease fusion protein system. Although IDPs are believed to be readily degraded by endogenous proteases when expressed in Escherichia coli, Npro-fused IDPs showed excellent resistance to degradation. Seven IDPs of uncharacterized function sampled from the human genome as well as 3 constructs from IDP regions derived from human FancM and Thermococcus kodakarensis Hef were prepared. We improved the protocol of refolding of Npro (EDDIE) to use dialysis, which is convenient for subsequent purification using reversed-phase (RP) HPLC. The method is robust and widely applicable to any IDP sample, promoting the acquisition of experimental data for IDPs in a high-throughput manner.