CONTROL OF PROTEIN SPLICING BY INTEIN FRAGMENT REASSEMBLY

Inteins are protein splicing elements that mediate their excision from precursor proteins and the joining of the flanking protein sequences (exteins). In this study, protein splicing was controlled by splitting precursor proteins within the Psp Pol-1 intein and expressing the res ultant fragments in separate hosts, Reconstitution of an active intein was achieved by in vitro assembly of precursor fragments. Both splici ng and intein endonuclease activity were restored, Complementary fragm ents from two of the three fragmentation positions tested were able to splice in vitro, Fragments resulting in redundant overlaps of intein sequences or containing affinity tags at the fragmentation sites were able to splice, Fragment pairs resulting in a gap in the intein sequen ce failed to splice or cleave, However, similar deletions in unfragmen ted precursors also failed to splice or cleave, Single splice junction cleavage was not observed with single fragments. lit vitro splicing o f intein fragments under native conditions was achieved using mini ext eins. Trans-splicing allows differential modification of defined regio ns of a protein prior to extein ligation, generating partially labeled proteins for NMR analysis or enabling the study of the effects of any type of protein modification on a limited region of a protein.