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Z basic -ΔI-CM is a novel intein-based self-cleavable tag we developed to accelerate the soluble expression of recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli (E. coli). Previously we found that intein activity could be interfered by its flanking exteins, and thus reducing the production efficiency and final yield. In this work, we used CXC-chemokine 9 (CXCL9) as a model C-extein, which fusion with Z basic -ΔI-CM showed high intein activity. When the fusion protein got soluble expression, CXCL9 was released immediately and purified directly from cell lysis supernatant. The results demonstrated that Z basic -ΔI-CM tag had successfully mediated the efficient production of high-quality CXCL9 with reduced time and resources consumption in comparison with inclusion bodies expression. Molecular dynamics simulations suggested that the improved cleavage activity of Z basic -ΔI-CM upon fusion with CXCL9 may be due to the higher dynamics of the first half loop and stabilization of the second half loop of intein. Our results proved that the self-cleavable Z basic -ΔI-CM mediated soluble expression could be a feasible process for cytokines like CXCL9, thus of attractive potentials for production of therapeutic proteins using E. coli expression system., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Our previous studies have shown that Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-encoded latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) potentiates chemotherapeutic agent-induced apoptosis in human cell lines of epithelial origin: cervical carcinoma-derived HeLa cells and nasopharyngeal carcinoma-derived TW03 cells. LMP1 acted upstream of caspase-dependent mitochondrial perturbation, and the effect was mapped to the C-terminal signaling domain of LMP1, designated CTAR2. CTAR2 is known to engage the c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and NF-kappaB pathways, and we show here that SP600125, a selective JNK inhibitor, suppresses LMP1 potentiation of cisplatin-induced mitochondrial damage and caspase activation in HeLa cells. Moreover, the potentiation of cisplatin-triggered caspase activation was blocked by Bay11-7082, a potent inhibitor of NF-kappaB. Similar results were obtained when a dominant negative form of IkappaB, a specific repressor of NF-kappaB, was co-expressed with LMP1. The current data support the notion that LMP1 modifies stress-induced apoptosis in epithelial cells through molecular interactions downstream of its C-terminal signaling domain.