For over a century, enzymatic activity has been studied , assuming similar activity in the crowded cellular milieu. Here, we determined in real time the catalytic activity of TEM1-β-lactamase inside living cells and compared the values to those obtained We found the apparent catalytic efficiency,/ , to be lower than , with significant cell-to-cell variability. Surprisingly, the results show that inside the cell the apparent catalytic efficiency decreases, and increases with increasing enzyme concentration. To rationalize these findings, we measured enzyme and substrate diffusion rates in the cell and found the latter to be slower than expected. Simulations showed that for attenuated diffusion the substrate flux becomes rate-limiting, explaining why reaction rates can be independent on enzyme concentrations. The octanol/water partition of the substrate is 4.5, which is in the range of Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs. This suggests substrate-limited reaction rates to be common. These findings indicate that data cannot be simply extrapolated to the crowded environment.
The basic requirement for understanding the nonviral gene delivery pathway is a thorough biophysical characterization of DNA polyplexes. In this work, we have studied the interactions between calf-thymus DNA (ctDNA)and a new series of linear cationic block copolymers (BCPs). The BCPs were synthesized via controlled radical polymerization using [3-(methacryloylamino)propyl] -trimethylammonium chloride (MAPTAC) and poly(ethyleneglycol) methyl ether (PEGMe) as comonomers. UV−visible spectroscopy, ethidium bromide dye exclusion, and gel electrophoresis study revealed that these cationic BCPs were capable of efficiently binding with DNA. Steady-state fluorescence, UV melting, gel electrophoresis, and circular dichroism results suggested increased binding for BCPs containing higher PEG. Hydrophobic interactions between the PEG and the DNA base pairs became significant at close proximity of the two macromolecules, thereby influencing the binding trend. DLS studies showed a decrease in the size of DNA molecules at lower charge ratio (the ratio of “+” charge of the polymer to “−” charge of DNA) due to compaction, whereas the size increased at higher charge ratio due to aggregation among the polyplexes. Additionally, we have conducted kinetic studies of the binding process using the stop-flow fluorescence method. All the results of BCP−DNA binding studies suggested a two-step reaction mechanism--a rapid electrostatic binding between the cationic blocks and DNA, followed by a conformational change of the polyplexes in the subsequent step that led to DNA condensation. The relative rate constant(k'(1)) of the first step was much higher compared to that of the second step (k'(2)), and both were found to increase with an increase in BCP concentration. The charge ratios as well as the PEG content in the BCPs had a marked effect on the kinetics of the DNA−BCP polyplex formation. Introduction of a desired PEG chain length in the synthesized cationic blocks renders them potentially useful as nonviral gene delivery agents.
Here, we enhanced the popular yeast display method by multiple rounds of DNA and protein engineering. We introduced surface exposure-tailored reporters, eUnaG2 and DnbALFA, creating a new platform of C and N terminal fusion vectors. The optimization of eUnaG2 resulted in five times brighter fluorescence and 10 °C increased thermostability than UnaG. The optimized DnbALFA has 10-fold the level of expression of the starting protein. Following this, different plasmids were developed to create a complex platform allowing a broad range of protein expression organizations and labeling strategies. Our platform showed up to five times better separation between nonexpressing and expressing cells compared with traditional pCTcon2 and c-myc labeling, allowing for fewer rounds of selection and achieving higher binding affinities. Testing 16 different proteins, the enhanced system showed consistently stronger expression signals over c-myc labeling. In addition to gains in simplicity, speed, and cost-effectiveness, new applications were introduced to monitor protein surface exposure and protein retention in the secretion pathway that enabled successful protein engineering of hard-to-express proteins. As an example, we show how we optimized the WD40 domain of the ATG16L1 protein for yeast surface and soluble bacterial expression, starting from a nonexpressing protein. As a second example, we show how using the here-presented enhanced yeast display method we rapidly selected high-affinity binders toward two protein targets, demonstrating the simplicity of generating new protein–protein interactions. While the methodological changes are incremental, it results in a qualitative enhancement in the applicability of yeast display for many applications.
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