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Hello one and all !!



I have been working on cloning and purification aspects on a Leishmanial
cysteine peptidase (pI= 8.2) for quite some time. I had cloned it in pGEX
expression vector. Expression seemed quite okay when induced with 0.5 and
1mM IPTG, so did the solubility in 4 buffers at different pH conditions. i.
e.  Tris (6.8), HEPES (7.5), Bicine (pH = 9) and Glycine (pH=10). The
problem is when I purify it using glutathione sepharose column I get
only GST (size wise estimation; no western tried ) i.e. a  prominent 25 KD
band. At the same time I get the fusion protein in the load, equilibration
and  wash fractions. When I increased salt concentration to 400 mM  I only
could exclude the fusion protein band from wash. I had tried protease
inhibitors like PMSF, sigma cocktail, and DTT in the lysate before
sonication. I had also tried reduced glutathione upto 40mM in the elution
buffer with two different pH  at 8 and 9.

I also read from the literature from similar proteases the behavior is
unaltered even after doing mutagenesis of the Cysteine residue at its active
site .Should I try ion exchange or affinity chromatography using any
inhibitor of this enzyme??
Can anyone suggest me some tip?? Guys help me out. i am  kind of struck here



Ashok Ranjan Nayak
Research Scholar
Molecular and Structural Biology Division
Central Drug Research Institute,
Lucknow