Freiburg07/report Ca sensor
From 2007.igem.org
Contents |
A single-protein calcium ion sensor mediating cell survival
iGEM team Freiburg
Introduction
Split enzymes:
Some enzymes can be divided into two separate parts that won´t show any activity until both parts are physically brought together again;
this circumstance allows enzyme-activity-assays.
As those assays were already being used in our lab before, we could access plasmids containing enzyme-halfs of beta-lactamase and Dihydrofolatereductase (DHFR).
The idea:
Was to attach those enzyme-halfs to several trigger-proteins (here: calmoduline, which provides a strong conformational change upon binding calcine)
by cloning each one of the enzyme-halfs and the trigger-protein together in one plasmid.
This plasmid would then contain the code for the whole "protein-machinery", allowing in vivo-tests as well as expression and purification of the engineered protein, an on/off-switchable enzyme.
