High-Throughput Expression and Purification of Human Solute Carriers for Structural and Biochemical Studies

Summary

Structural and biochemical studies of human membrane transporters require milligram quantities of stable, intact, and homogeneous protein. Here we describe scalable methods to screen, express, and purify human solute carrier transporters using codon-optimized genes.

Abstract

Solute carriers (SLCs) are membrane transporters that import and export a range of endogenous and exogenous substrates, including ions, nutrients, metabolites, neurotransmitters, and pharmaceuticals. Despite having emerged as attractive therapeutic targets and markers of disease, this group of proteins is still relatively underdrugged by current pharmaceuticals. Drug discovery projects for these transporters are impeded by limited structural, functional, and physiological knowledge, ultimately due to the difficulties in the expression and purification of this class of membrane-embedded proteins. Here, we demonstrate methods to obtain high-purity, milligram quantities of human SLC transporter proteins using codon-optimized gene sequences. In conjunction with a systematic exploration of construct design and high-throughput expression, these protocols ensure the preservation of the structural integrity and biochemical activity of the target proteins. We also highlight critical steps in the eukaryotic cell expression, affinity purification, and size-exclusion chromatography of these proteins. Ultimately, this workflow yields pure, functionally active, and stable protein preparations suitable for high-resolution structure determination, transport studies, small-molecule engagement assays, and high-throughput in vitro screening.

Introduction

Membrane proteins have long been targets for researchers and pharmaceutical industries alike. Of these, the solute carriers (SLCs) are a family of over 400 secondary transporter genes encoded within the human genome¹. These transporters are involved in the import and export of numerous molecules, including ions², neurotransmitters³, lipids^4,5,6,7, amino acids⁸, nutrients^9,10,

Protocol

NOTE: All codon-optimized RESOLUTE SLC genes have been deposited into AddGene⁴³, the links to which are available on the list of RESOLUTE public reagents⁴⁴. These genes have been cloned into the pDONR221 plasmid and allow direct cloning of the genes into the destination vector using recombination cloning⁴⁵. To maximize parallelism, bacterial, insect, and mammalian cells are grown in block format for bacmid production (section 3), baculovirus amplification (section 5), and expression testing (section 6), respectively. For these steps, a micro-expression shaker is required to ensure sufficient ....

Discussion

The development of SLC-targeting therapies has remained hampered due to the absence of systematic characterization of transporter function. This has led to disproportionally fewer drugs targeting this protein class relative to GPCRs and ion channels⁶³, despite their numerous roles in normal and pathophysiological processes. RESOLUTE is an international consortium aimed at developing cutting-edge research techniques and tools to accelerate and improve current SLC research. As a part of RESOLUTE, we.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
3C protease	Produced in-house
50 or 100 kDa cut-off centrifugal concentrators	Sartorius	VS0242
5-Cyclohexyl-1-Pentyl-β-D-Maltoside	Anatrace	C325	CYMAL-5
96-well bacmid purification kit	Millipore	LSKP09604	Montage Plasmid Miniprep
96-well block (2 mL)	Greiner Bio-One	780271
Adhesive plastic seals	Qiagen	19570	Tape Pads
Agarose size exclusion chromatography column	Cytiva	29091596	Superose 6 Increase 10/300 GL
Benzonase DNAse	Produced in-house
BisTris	Sigma Aldrich	B9754
Cholesteryl Hemisuccinate Tris salt	Anatrace	CH210	CHS
Cobalt metal affinity resin	Takara Bio	635653	TALON Metal Affinity Resin
D(+)-Biotin	Sigma Aldrich	851209
Dextran-agarose size exclusion chromatography column	Cytiva	28990944	Superdex 200 Increase 10/300 GL
Digitonin	Apollo Scientific	BID3301
Dounce tissue grinder (40 mL)	DWK Life Sciences	357546
EDTA-free protease inhibitor cocktail	Sigma Aldrich	4693132001	cOmplete, EDTA-free Protease Inhibitor Cocktail
Fetal Bovine Serum	Thermo Fisher	10500064
Fos-Choline-12	Anatrace	F308S	FS-12
Glycerol	Sigma Aldrich	G5516
Glyco-diosgenin	Anatrace	GDN101	GDN
Gravity flow columns	Cole-Parmer	WZ-06479-25
HEK293 medium	Thermo Fisher	12338018	FreeStyle 293 medium
HEPES	Apollo Scientific	BI8181
Hydrophilic, neutral silica UHPLC column	Sepax	231300-4615	Unix-C SEC-300 4.6 x 150
Imidazole	Sigma Aldrich	56750
Insect transfection reagent	Sigma Aldrich	71259	Reagent
Lauryl Maltose Neopentyl Glycol	Anatrace	NG310	LMNG
Magnesium Chloride Hexahydrate	Sigma Aldrich	M2670
Micro-expression shaker	Glas-Col	107A DPMINC24CE
NaCl	Sigma Aldrich	S9888
n-Decyl-β-D-Maltoside	Anatrace	D322	DM
n-Dodecyl-b-D-Maltopyranoside	Anatrace	D310	DDM
n-Dodecyl-N,N-Dimethylamine-N-Oxide	Anatrace	D360	LDAO
n-Nonyl-β-D-Glucopyranoside	Anatrace	N324S	NG
n-Octyl-d17-β-D-Glucopyranoside	Anatrace	O311D	OGNG
Octaethylene Glycol Monododecyl Ether	Anatrace	O330	C12E8
Octyl Glucose Neopentyl Glycol	Anatrace	NG311	OGNG
Phosphate Buffered Saline	Sigma Aldrich	D8537	DPBS
Polyoxyethylene(10)dodecyl Ether	Anatrace	AP1210	C12E10
Polyoxyethylene(9)dodecyl Ether	Anatrace	APO129	C12E9
Porous seal for tissue culture plates	VWR	60941-084	Rayon Films for Biological Cultures
Proteinase K	New England Biolabs	P8107S
Recombination enzyme mix	Thermo Fisher	11791020	Gateway LR Clonase II
Serum-free insect media	Gibco	10902088	Sf-900 II serum-free media
Sodium Butyrate	Sigma Aldrich	303410
Sonicator 24-head probe	Sonics	630-0579
Sonicator power unit	Sonics	VCX 750
Strep-Tactin resin	IBA Life Sciences	2-5030-025	Strep-TactinXT 4Flow high- capacity resin
Sucrose	Sigma Aldrich	S7903
Sucrose Monododecanoate	Anatrace	S350	DDS
Suspension-adapted HEK293 cells	Thermo Fisher	A14527	Expi293F
Transfection reagent	Sigma Aldrich	70967	GeneJuice Transfection Reagent