The construction and purification of recombinant baculovirus vectors for the expression of foreign genes in insect cells by standard transfection and plaque assay methods can take as long as 4 to 6 weeks. This period can be reduced to several days by using a novel baculovirus shuttle vector (bacmid) that can replicate in Escherichia coli as a plasmid and can infect susceptible lepidopteran insect cells. The bacmid is a recombinant virus that contains a mini-F replicon, a kanamycin resistance marker, and attTn7, the target site for the bacterial transposon Tn7. Expression cassettes comprising a baculovirus promoter driving expression of a foreign gene that is flanked by the left and right ends of Tn7 can transpose to the target bacmid in E. coli when Tn7 transposition functions are provided in trans by a helper plasmid. The foreign gene is expressed when the resulting composite bacmid is introduced into insect cells.
Protein N-myristoylation refers to the covalent attachment of a myristoyl group (C14:0), via amide linkage, to the NH2-terminal glycine residue of certain cellular and viral proteins. Myristoyl-CoA:protein N-myristoyltransferase (NMT) catalyzes this cotranslational modification. We have developed a system for studying the substrate requirements and biological effects of protein N-myristoylation as well as NMT structure-activit relationships. Expression of the yeast NMT1 gene in Escherchia cofi, a bacterium that has no endogenous NMT activity, results in production of the intact 53-kDa NMT polypeptide as well as a truncated polypeptide derived from proteolytic removal of its NH2-terminal 39 amino acids. Each E. coli-synthesized NMT species has fatty acid and peptide substrate specificities that are indistinguishable from those of NMT recovered from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, suggesting that the NH2-terminal domain of this enzyme is not required for its catalytic activity. By using a dual plasmid system, N-myristoylation of a mammalian protein was reconstituted inE. coliby simultaneous expression ofthe yeastNMT1 gene and a murine cDNA encoding the catalytic (C) subunit of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PK-A). The fatty acid specificity of N-myristoylation was preserved in this system: [9,10(n)-3H]myristate but not [9,10(n)3H~palmitate was efficiently linked to Gly-1 of the C subunit. [13,14(n)-3HJ10-Propoxydecanoic acid, a heteroatom-containing analog of myristic acid with reduced hydrophobicity but similar chain length, was an effective alternative substrate for NMT that also could be incorporated into the C subunit of PK-A. Such Cotranslational (1) covalent attachment of myristic acid (C14:0) to the NH2-terminal glycine residue of a variety of cellular and viral proteins is, in many instances, required for full expression of their biological activity (reviewed in refs. 2 and 3). Current approaches to understanding the contribution of N-myristoylation to protein structure and function have involved site-directed mutagenesis of the NH2-terminal glycine to prevent acylation or the incorporation of heteroatomcontaining analogs of myristic acid with reduced hydrophobicity into N-myristoylated proteins in vivo (4). For example, abolishing myristoylation of the tyrosine kinase p6Ov-src by deletion of its Gly-1 residue or by Gly-1 -+ Ala substitution revealed (5, 6) that the C14:0 fatty acid is required for the protein's stable association with the plasma membrane (probably through interaction with a high-affinity myristoyl-src receptor; refs. 7 and 8) and its ability to transform cells. Analogous mutagenesis of the Gly-1 residues of the Moloney murine leukemia virus Pr65g (9), the Mason-Pfizer monkey virus Pr7859 (10), and the Pr55n of human immunodeficiency virus I (11) blocks viral replication. X-ray crystallographic studies (12) and site-directed mutagenesis (13) of the N-myristoylated poliovirus capsid protein VP4 have also indicated that myristic acid is involved in protein-protein interactions and in vir...
A deletion variant of human interleukin-3, hIL-3 15-125 , was produced in the periplasmic space of Escherichia coli and had full activity in an AML193.1.3 cell proliferation assay. Libraries of random single-amino acid substitutions were constructed at each of 105 positions in the gene for hIL-3 . Approximately eight single-site substitutions at each position were produced in osmotic shock fractions and screened for activity. 15 mutants were found with bioactivity of 5-26-fold greater than that of native hIL-3. The majority of amino acids in hIL-3 15-125 could be substituted without substantial loss of activity. Substitution of residues predicted to be in the hydrophobic core of the protein often resulted in reduced activity and/or low accumulation levels. Only five residues predicted to be on the surface of the protein were intolerant of substitution and hence are candidates for sites of interaction with the receptor. We therefore propose that the majority of residues in hIL-3 serve a structural role and permit the display of a few key residues in the correct configuration for recognition by the receptor.Human interleukin-3 (hIL-3) 1 is a multilineage hematopoietic cytokine acting in the bone marrow to promote the growth of most lineages of blood cell precursors (1). Recently, exogenously administered hIL-3 has shown promise for the clinical relief of neutropenia and thrombocytopenia induced by cancer chemotherapy (2, 3). Sequence homology comparisons of hIL-3 with other proteins indicate that it is a member of the hematopoietic cytokine family (4 -6) and that it adopts a four-␣-helix bundle topology (7-10). The protein binds to a receptor comprising at least two nonidentical subunits (11, 12). Although the precise nature of interaction between hIL-3 and its receptor is not known, studies using site-specific mutants have shed some light on which portions of the protein are important for function (8,(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). In particular, mutagenesis of the adjacent helices A and D indicate that these regions are important for interaction with the receptor. This is similar to the findings for human interleukin-5 and human granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor, whose receptors share a common  subunit with the hIL-3 receptor (11,18,19). Other members of the hematopoietic cytokine family also have important residues in helices A and D (19 -23) and in helix C (20,22,24,25).In this paper we have undertaken an extensive mutagenesis of hIL-3 in order to discover mutants with enhanced proliferative activity and to define residues necessary for activity. Although alanine scanning mutagenesis has been successfully used to derive structure-activity information (20, 26 -32), we chose to perform a more extensive mutagenesis, permitting the incorporation of any of the possible 19 substitutions (33). MATERIALS AND METHODS Production of hIL-3 and Variants in the Escherichia coli Cytoplasm-General techniques for manipulation of DNA are described elsewhere (34). The hIL-3 gene (35) was obtained from British Biotechnolo...
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