Objective: To explore the reasons for the low intracellular transduction efficiency of a previously constructed His-TAT-Flag recombinant protein and establish a more efficient transduction system.
Methods: The Flag tag of pET14b-His- Tat-Flag vector was deleted with PCR mutant kit, and enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) coding sequence was inserted into the new pET14b-His-TAT recombinant vector. Enzyme digestion and DNA sequencing were performed for identification of pET14b-His-TAT-EGFP vector, which was then transformed into E. coli BL21(DE(3)). After IPTG induction, the recombinant protein of His-TAT-EGFP was isolated and analyzed with SDS-PAGE. Purified His-TAT-EGFP recombinant protein was added to ECV304 cells and the fluorescence was observed to evaluate the transduction efficiency.
Results: pET14b-His-TAT vector and pET14b-His-TAT- EGFP vector were successfully constructed, which was identified with enzyme digestion and DNA sequencing. His-TAT-EGFP fusion protein was expressed and purified successfully and showed cellular transduction activity.
Conclusion: The prokaryotic expression vector has been successfully constructed by modifying pET14b-His-TAT-Flag, and the expressed and purified recombinant protein of His-TAT-EGFP possesses high efficiency of intracellular transduction activity.