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Introducing genetically encoded aldehydes into proteins

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Abstract

Methods for introducing bioorthogonal functionalities into proteins have become central to protein engineering efforts. Here we describe a method for the site-specific introduction of aldehyde groups into recombinant proteins using the 6-amino-acid consensus sequence recognized by the formylglycine-generating enzyme. This genetically encoded 'aldehyde tag' is no larger than a His6 tag and can be exploited for numerous protein labeling applications.

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Figure 1: The sulfatase motif can serve as an aldehyde tag for site-specific protein modification.
Figure 2: Selective labeling of aldehyde-tagged proteins.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Francis and J. Rush for helpful discussions and D. King and A. Falick for MS expertise. I.S.C. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the US National Institutes of Health. B.L.C. was supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the US National Science Foundation. This work was supported by a grant from the US National Institutes of Health to C.R.B. (GM59907).

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Author notes

  1. Isaac S Carrico

    Present address: Present address: Department of Chemistry, 533 Graduate Chemistry, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA.,

  2. Isaac S Carrico and Brian L Carlson: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, B84 Hildebrand Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Isaac S Carrico & Carolyn R Bertozzi

  2. Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, B84 Hildebrand Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Brian L Carlson & Carolyn R Bertozzi

Authors
  1. Isaac S Carrico
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  2. Brian L Carlson
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  3. Carolyn R Bertozzi
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Contributions

I.S.C. and B.L.C. carried out cloning, expression, purification and fluorescent tagging of the constructs. I.S.C. quantified conversion to fGly and performed multiple epitope assays. B.L.C. performed PEGylation assays. C.R.B. directed the project. All authors worked together to compose the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carolyn R Bertozzi.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

Mass spectra confirming the presence of fGly in a tryptic peptide from ald13-Stf0. (PDF 222 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

Quantitation of the conversion of cysteine to formylglycine using mass spectrometry. (PDF 156 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 3

Quantitation of the conversion of cysteine to formylglycine using Alexa Fluor 647 C5-aminooxyacetamide labeling. (PDF 251 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 4

PEGylation of ald6-MBP with 2 kDa and 5 kDa aminooxy-PEG. (PDF 184 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

Oligonucleotides used in this study. (PDF 274 kb)

Supplementary Methods (PDF 285 kb)

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Carrico, I., Carlson, B. & Bertozzi, C. Introducing genetically encoded aldehydes into proteins. Nat Chem Biol 3, 321–322 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio878

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio878

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