Rapid Affinity Purification of Intracellular Organelles Using a Twin Strep Tag Jian Xiong1,2,*, Jingquan He1,*, Wendy P
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© 2019. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd | Journal of Cell Science (2019) 132, jcs235390. doi:10.1242/jcs.235390 TOOLS AND RESOURCES Rapid affinity purification of intracellular organelles using a twin strep tag Jian Xiong1,2,*, Jingquan He1,*, Wendy P. Xie1, Ezekiel Hinojosa1, Chandra Shekar R. Ambati3, Nagireddy Putluri3,4, Hyun-Eui Kim1,2, Michael X. Zhu1,2,‡ and Guangwei Du1,2,‡ ABSTRACT complex 1 (mTORC1) is recruited to and activated on the lysosomal Cells are internally organized into compartmentalized organelles that surface by sensing the abundance of nutrients in the lumen, such as execute specialized functions. To understand the functions of amino acids and cholesterol (Castellano et al., 2017; Zoncu et al., individual organelles and their regulations, it is critical to resolve the 2011). Similarly, mitochondria can also function as a signaling compositions of individual organelles, which relies on a rapid and organelle (Chandel, 2014). For example, cytochrome c released from efficient isolation method for specific organellar populations. Here, we the mitochondria initiates cell death (Bhola and Letai, 2016; Burke, introduce a robust affinity purification method for rapid isolation of 2017; Liu et al., 1996). Another example is AKAP family proteins, intracellular organelles (e.g. lysosomes, mitochondria and which anchor and regulate the activities of protein kinase A and other peroxisomes) by taking advantage of the extraordinarily high affinity signaling enzymes on the outer membrane of mitochondria (Chandel, between the twin strep tag and streptavidin variants. With this 2014; Esseltine and Scott, 2013). method, we can isolate desired organelles with high purity and yield in With rapid technical advancements, profiling the global levels of 3 min from the post-nuclear supernatant of mammalian cells or less RNA, protein, lipids and metabolites has become common in than 8 min for the whole purification process. Using lysosomes as an current biomedical research. However, most of these large-scale example, we show that the rapid procedure is especially useful for profiling studies do not provide spatial information (Uhlen et al., studying transient and fast cellular activities, such as organelle- 2015), thus cannot explain how different organelles regulate their initiated signaling and organellar contents of small-molecular highly compartmentalized cellular functions. The ability of metabolites. Therefore, our method offers a powerful tool to dissect measuring the compositions of specific organellar populations spatiotemporal regulation and functions of intracellular organelles. and their changes in response to stimuli would provide a powerful tool to understand the functions of these organelles. KEY WORDS: Twin strep tag, Lysosomes, Mitochondria, Isolation of different organelles is traditionally accomplished by Peroxisomes subcellular fractionation with differential centrifugation or multi- step density gradient ultracentrifugation (de Araujo and Huber, INTRODUCTION 2007; Foster et al., 2006; Frezza et al., 2007; Graham, 2001a,b,c; Eukaryotic cells are compartmentalized into distinct membrane- Michelsen and von Hagen, 2009). However, most subcellular enclosed organelles. Each organelle carries hundreds to thousands of fractionation approaches bear some intrinsic drawbacks. For proteins, lipids and metabolites, and performs a unique set of cellular example, the heterogeneous nature in the density of any given functions. For example, lysosomes are the major degradation organellar population makes it difficult to obtain a type of compartments responsible for the clearance of unnecessary organelle without contamination from the others. In addition, the materials inside the cells (Kurz et al., 2008). Mitochondria are the concentration of a desired organellar population collected from major organelles for the ATP generation required to support cellular multiple fractions is often relatively low, making some downstream synthetic pathways (Chandel, 2014). Peroxisomes are the primary analyses challenging. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, the vesicles that catabolize long-chain fatty acids and regulate the balance subcellular fractionation methods usually take more than an hour of oxidization (Lodhi and Semenkovich, 2014; Smith and Aitchison, (Frezza et al., 2007; Graham, 2001a,b,c), which may lead to 2013). In addition to their well-known classic functions, recent changes in the compositions of organelles, especially the signaling studies have also revealed that some organelles are directly involved molecules associated with the cytoplasmic leaflet of the organelles in cell signaling. For example, mechanistic target of rapamycin and some labile small-molecule metabolites. Besides fractionation, specific methods have also been developed for the purification of certain organelles. For example, lysosomes can be isolated by 1Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, magnets after being loaded with iron oxide-conjugated dextrans USA. 2Biochemistry and Cell Biology Program, MD Anderson Cancer Center (Rofe and Pryor, 2016). However, depending on the duration of UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX 77030, USA. 3Dan loading and chasing, dextrans are enriched to different degrees in L. Duncan Cancer Center, Advanced Technology Core, Alkek Center for Molecular Discovery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. 4Department of various endosome populations and lysosomes (Humphries et al., Molecular & Cell Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. 2011). Moreover, long-term accumulation of non-degradable *These authors contributed equally to this work dextran may have some unexpected effects on lysosomal ‡Authors for correspondence ([email protected]; guangwei.du@uth. functions (Kurz et al., 2008). Some recent studies have shown the tmc.edu) successful purification of mitochondria and lysosomes by using beads conjugated to antibodies against an endogenous J.H., 0000-0002-9341-8750; W.P.X., 0000-0002-0085-4415; M.X.Z., 0000-0002- 5676-841X; G.D., 0000-0003-4193-6975 mitochondrial or lysosomal-resident protein (Franko et al., 2013; Michelsen and von Hagen, 2009), or against an epitope tag fused to Received 17 June 2019; Accepted 15 November 2019 these resident proteins (Abu-Remaileh et al., 2017; Ahier et al., Journal of Cell Science 1 TOOLS AND RESOURCES Journal of Cell Science (2019) 132, jcs235390. doi:10.1242/jcs.235390 2018; Chen et al., 2016; Zoncu et al., 2011). Antibody affinity Furthermore, using lysosomes as an example, we demonstrate purification is fast and specific; thus it overcomes some drawbacks that this method can be used to monitor the transient lysosomal of the traditional approaches. However, antibody affinity association of signaling protein complexes as well as small- purification requires a substantial amount of antibody. In addition, molecule metabolites. the elution of functional organelles is achieved via the competition by a high concentration of epitope peptides, which is usually not RESULTS very efficient. Design of a new affinity lysosome purification approach One popular protein purification strategy is fusing the proteins of using twin strep tag interest to the Strep II tag (WSHPQFEK), which mimics the strong Many applications involved in organelle purification, such as interaction between biotin and streptavidin (Kimple et al., 2013; evaluation of signaling events and measurement of small-molecule Schmidt and Skerra, 2007). Strep II-tagged proteins can be metabolites, require rapid recovery as well as maintenance of efficiently eluted by a low concentration of biotin derivatives. The organelles in the physiological conditions during purification and small Strep II tag is biologically inert, and the binding between the elution. To test the use of twin strep tag in organelle purification, we tagged proteins and streptavidin beads can take place under fused the twin strep tag to the C-terminus of monomeric GFP physiological conditions. In addition to protein purification, the (mGFP)-fused LAMP1, a lysosome-resident protein (hereafter readily reversible interaction has allowed the use of Strep II tag for denoted Lyso-2Strep) (Fig. 1A). The cytoplasmic orientation of the purification of live antigen-specific T cells (Liu et al., 2016). the twin strep would allow subsequent purification of lysosomes The recently generated streptavidin variant, Strep-Tactin XT, using streptavidin beads (Fig. 1B). All lysosomal membrane further increases the binding affinity between two tandem Strep proteins are synthesized in the rough endoplasmic reticulum and tags (herein denoted the ‘twin strep tag’) (Schmidt et al., 2013; transported to trans-Golgi network before they are delivered to Yeliseev et al., 2017). As compared to micromolar-to-nanomolar lysosomes (Braulke and Bonifacino, 2009). The expression of Lyso- dissociation constant (Kd) for most commercial epitope antibodies, 2Strep is under the control of a tetracycline-inducible promoter, such as FLAG, Myc and HA (Einhauer and Jungbauer, 2001; which offers the option of turning off the transcription a few hours LaCava et al., 2015; Schiweck et al., 1997; Wegner et al., 2002), before lysosome isolation. This allows lysosomal delivery of newly twin strep tag features a nanomolar-to-picomolar Kd towards Strep- translated Lyso-2Strep protein, ensuring that the majority of Tactin XT