The study on membrane proteins is an important challenge mainly because of their very poor solubility in various solvents. The traditional recombinant expression strategy and the native chemical ligation method both have difficulty in generating sufficient amounts of desired proteins with high efficiency. Previous studies have shown that multiply fluorinated alcohols exhibit good ability to dissolve difficult peptide sequences, especially hexafluoro-2-propanol (HFIP). In the present study we systematically studied the capability of solvents containing different percentage of HFIP in dissolving transmembrane peptides. Through both HPLC and UV analyses we concluded that 60% HFIP/8 M urea constituted a good solvent system. In this solvent system we also optimized conditions to perform native chemical ligation (NCL). Under the optimized conditions we successfully achieved NCL’s for both dipeptide formation and the synthesis of a model protein (Trifolitoxin). These results suggested that HFIP was a potential cosolvent that could be used in the ligation of poorly soluble peptides for the generation of membrane proteins.
膜蛋白的研究是一项重要挑战,这主要是因为它们在各种溶剂中的溶解性极差。传统的
重组表达策略和天然
化学连接方法都难以高效地产生足够数量的所需蛋白质。先前的研究表明,多
氟化醇具有良好的难溶肽段溶解能力,尤其是六
氟-2-
丙醇(HFIP)。在本研究中,我们系统地研究了含有不同比例HFIP的溶剂对跨膜肽溶解能力的系统研究。通过HPLC和UV分析,我们得出结论,60% HFIP/8 M urea构成了一种良好的溶剂体系。在此溶剂体系中,我们还优化了进行天然
化学连接(NCL)的条件。在优化的条件下,我们成功实现了二肽形成和模型蛋白质(Trifolitoxin)合成的NCL。这些结果表明,HFIP是一种潜在的共溶剂,可用于连接难溶肽段以生成膜蛋白。