Protein Mapping in Cell Cycle Studies

Abstract

Immunoprecipitations are used frequently in cell cycle studies to study protein levels, kinase activities, and protein-protein interactions. The ability to coprecipitate components of the cell cycle machinery has greatly facilitated our understanding of the cell cycle by revealing who interacts with whom. It was early immunoprecipitations of Cyclin A that suggested that there may be other Cdc2-related kinases (Faha et al. 1992), these observations ultimately leading to the cloning of cdk2. Co-immunoprecipitations have allowed the identification of most Cyclin/Cdk interactions, and also the identification of other regulatory proteins that interact with these complexes. A critical element in these discoveries was the ability to identify coprecipitating proteins either using antibodies or by peptide mapping.