Abstract
Replication protein A (RPA) is an essential single-stranded DNA (ssDNA)-binding protein that sequesters ssDNA and protects it from nucleolytic degradation. The RPA-ssDNA nucleoprotein acts as a hub to recruit over two dozen DNA metabolic enzymes onto ssDNA to coordinate DNA replication, repair, and recombination. RPA functions as a heterotrimer composed of RPA70, RPA32, and RPA14 subunits and has multiple DNA-binding and protein-interaction domains. Several of these domains are connected by disordered linkers allowing RPA to adopt a wide variety of conformations on ssDNA. Here we describe a fluorescence-based tool to monitor the dynamics of select DNA-binding domains of RPA. Noncanonical amino acids are utilized to site-specifically engineer fluorescent probes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae RPA heterologously expressed in BL21 (DE3) and its derivatives. A procedure to synthesize 4-azido-l-phenylalanine (4AZP), a noncanonical amino acid, is also described. Sites for fluorophore positioning that produce a measurable change in fluorescence upon binding to ssDNA are detailed. This fluorescence enhancement through noncanonical amino acid (FEncAA) approach can also be applied to other DNA-binding proteins to investigate the dynamics of protein-nucleic acid interactions.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by grants from the NIH to E.A. (R01GM130746 and R01GM133967) and S.O. (R15GM126477).
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Kuppa, S., Pokhrel, N., Corless, E., Origanti, S., Antony, E. (2021). Generation of Fluorescent Versions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae RPA to Study the Conformational Dynamics of Its ssDNA-Binding Domains. In: Oliveira, M.T. (eds) Single Stranded DNA Binding Proteins. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2281. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1290-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1290-3_9
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