Real-time single-molecule coimmunoprecipitation of weak protein-protein interactions

Nat Protoc. 2013 Oct;8(10):2045-60. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2013.116. Epub 2013 Sep 26.

Abstract

Coimmunoprecipitation (co-IP) analysis is a useful method for studying protein-protein interactions. It currently involves electrophoresis and western blotting, which are not optimized for detecting weak and transient interactions. In this protocol we describe an advanced version of co-IP analysis that uses real-time, single-molecule fluorescence imaging as its detection scheme. Bait proteins are pulled down onto the imaging plane of a total internal reflection (TIR) microscope. With unpurified cells or tissue extracts kept in reaction chambers, we observe single protein-protein interactions between the surface-immobilized bait and the fluorescent protein-labeled prey proteins in real time. Such direct recording provides an improvement of five orders of magnitude in the time resolution of co-IP analysis. With the single-molecule sensitivity and millisecond time resolution, which distinguish our method from other methods for measuring weak protein-protein interactions, it is possible to quantify the interaction kinetics and active fraction of native, unlabeled bait proteins. Real-time single-molecule co-IP analysis, which takes ∼4 h to complete from lysate preparation to kinetic analysis, provides a general avenue for revealing the rich kinetic picture of target protein-protein interactions, and it can be used, for example, to investigate the molecular lesions that drive individual cancers at the level of protein-protein interactions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Immunoprecipitation / methods*
  • Kinetics
  • Protein Interaction Mapping / methods*
  • Proteins / chemistry*
  • Software

Substances

  • Proteins