Won-Je Kim

Codon optimization enhances protein expression of human peptide deformylase in E. coli

Human peptide deformylase (hPDF), located in the mitochondria, has recently become a promising target for anti-cancer therapy. However, the expression of the hPDF gene in Escherichia coli is not efficient likely due to extremely high levels of GC content as well as the presence of rare codons. We performed codon optimization of the hPDF gene in order to reduce GC content and to eliminate rare codons. Putative stable secondary structures of the optimized gene were also reduced. Codon optimization increased the expression of hPDF protein (residues 63-243) presumably by reducing the GC content. A large amount of soluble hPDF was obtained upon its fusion with thioredoxin (Trx-hPDF), although an insoluble fraction was still dominant. We confirmed that Co(2+) is an optimal metal for increasing the activity of purified Trx-hPDF, and that actinonin acts as an efficient inhibitor. Therefore, a large amount of purified hPDF protein would provide many benefits for the screening of various drug candidates.

Proper NMR methods for studying RNA thermometers

Abstract In some pathogenic bacteria, there are RNA thermometers, which regulate the production of virulence associated factors or heat shock proteins depending on temperature changes. Like a riboswitches, RNA thermometers are located in the 5’-untranslated region and involved translational gene regulatory mechanism. RNA thermometers block the ribosome-binding site and start codon area under the 37℃ living systems. within their secondary structure. After bacterial infection, increased the temperature in the host causes conformations changes of RNA, and the ribosome-binding site is exposed for translational initiation. Because structural differences between open and closed forms of RNA thermometers are mainly mediated by base pairing changes, NMR spectroscopy is a very useful method to study these thermodynamically changing RNA structure. In this review, we briefly provide a fundamental function of RNA thermometers, and also suggest a proper NMR experiments for studying RNA thermometers.

Enhanced Chemical Shift Analysis for Secondary Structure prediction of protein

Predicting secondary structure of protein through assigned backbone chemical shifts has been used widely because of its convenience and flexibility. In spite of its usefulness, chemical shift based analysis has some defects including isotopic shifts and solvent interaction. Here, it is shown that corrected chemical shift analysis for secondary structure of protein. It is included chemical shift correction through consideration of deuterium isotopic effect and calculate chemical shift index using probability-based methods. Enhanced method was applied successfully to one of the proteins from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is suggested that correction of chemical shift analysis could increase accuracy of secondary structure prediction of protein and small molecule in solution.

Backbone 1 H, 15 N, and 13 C Resonance Assignment and Secondary Structure Prediction of HP1298 from Helicobacter pylori

HP1298 (Swiss-Prot ID ; P65108) is an 72-residue protein from Helicobacter pylori strain 26695. The function of HP1298 was identified as Translation initiation factor IF-l based on sequence homology, and HP1298 is included in IF-l family. Here, we report the sequence-specific backbone resonance assignments of HP1298. About 97% of all the , , , , and resonances could be assigned unambiguously. We could predict the secondary structure of HP1298, by analyzing the deviation of the and shemical shifts from their respective random coil values. Secondary structure prediction shows that HP1298 consists of six -strands. This study is a prerequisite for determining the solution structure of HP1298 and investigating the structure-function relationship of HP1298. Assigned chemical shift can be used for the study on interaction between HP1298 and other Helicobacter pylori proteins.