Protein Fusion Strategies for Membrane Protein Stabilization and Crystal Structure Determination

Shixuan Liu, Weikai Li

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Crystal structures of membrane proteins are highly desired for their use in the mechanistic understanding of their functions and the designing of new drugs. However, obtaining the membrane protein structures is difficult. One way to overcome this challenge is with protein fusion methods, which have been successfully used to determine the structures of many membrane proteins, including receptors, enzymes and adhesion molecules. Existing fusion strategies can be categorized into the N or C terminal fusion, the insertion fusion and the termini restraining. The fusions facilitate protein expression, purification, crystallization and phase determination. Successful applications often require further optimization of protein fusion linkers and interactions, whose design can be facilitated by a shared helix strategy and by AlphaFold prediction in the future.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1041
JournalCrystals
Volume12
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2022

Keywords

  • crystallization
  • fusion protein
  • GPCR
  • insertion fusion
  • membrane protein
  • termini restraining
  • VKOR

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