Cloning, expression, purification, characterization, crystallization and X-ray crystallographic analysis of recombinant Der f 21 (rDer f 21) fromDermatophagoides farinae
Dermatophagoides farinaeis one of the major house dust mite (HDM) species that cause allergic diseases. N-terminally His-tagged recombinant Der f 21 (rDer f 21), a group 21 allergen, with the signal peptide truncated was successfully overexpressed in anEscherichia coliexpression system. The purified rDer f 21 protein was initially crystallized using the sitting-drop vapour-diffusion method. Well diffracting protein crystals were obtained after optimization of the crystallization conditions using the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method with a reservoir solution consisting of 0.19 MTris–HCl pH 8.0, 32% PEG 400 at 293 K. X-ray diffraction data were collected to 1.49 Å resolution using an in-house X-ray source. The crystal belonged to theC-centered monoclinic space groupC2, with unit-cell parametersa= 123.46,b= 27.71,c= 90.25 Å, β = 125.84°. The calculated Matthews coefficient (VM) of 2.06 Å3 Da−1suggests that there are two molecules per asymmetric unit, with a solvent content of 40.3%. Despite sharing high sequence identity with Blo t 5 (45%) and Blo t 21 (41%), both of which were determined to be monomeric in solution, size-exclusion chromatography, static light scattering and self-rotation function analysis indicate that rDer f 21 is likely to be a dimeric protein.