Construction of gateway-compatible baculovirus expression vectors for high-throughput protein expression and in vivo microcrystal screening

Sci Rep. 2020 Aug 7;10(1):13323. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-70163-2.

Abstract

Baculovirus mediated-insect cell expression systems have been widely used for producing heterogeneous proteins. However, to date, there is still the lack of an easy-to-manipulate system that enables the high-throughput protein characterization in insect cells by taking advantage of large existing Gateway clone libraries. To resolve this limitation, we have constructed a suite of Gateway-compatible pIEx-derived baculovirus expression vectors that allow the rapid and cost-effective construction of expression clones for mass parallel protein expression in insect cells. This vector collection also supports the attachment of a variety of fusion tags to target proteins to meet the needs for different research applications. We first demonstrated the utility of these vectors for protein expression and purification using a set of 40 target proteins of various sizes, cellular localizations and host organisms. We then established a scalable pipeline coupled with the SONICC and TEM techniques to screen for microcrystal formation within living insect cells. Using this pipeline, we successfully identified microcrystals for ~ 16% of the tested protein set, which can be potentially used for structure elucidation by X-ray crystallography. In summary, we have established a versatile pipeline enabling parallel gene cloning, protein expression and purification, and in vivo microcrystal screening for structural studies.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Baculoviridae* / genetics
  • Baculoviridae* / metabolism
  • Crystallography, X-Ray
  • Gene Expression*
  • Genetic Vectors*
  • Microscopy, Electron, Transmission
  • Recombinant Proteins / biosynthesis
  • Recombinant Proteins / genetics
  • Sf9 Cells
  • Spodoptera

Substances

  • Recombinant Proteins