S1 nuclease (from Aspergillus oryzae) is a specific enzyme to degrade single stranded DNA or RNA molecules. It has been reported to be able to convert superhelical circular DNA molecules into open circle or linear forms under certain conditions, but this function has not been well explored. In order to use the action of S1 nuclease to linearize circular DNA and develop a novel way of cloning microcircular DNAs, the pUC19 was used to investigate the relationship between the linearization efficiency of S1 nuclease and the amount of enzyme used. By this way the optimal conditions for linearization of circular DNAs by S1 nuclease would be determined. 0.3u to 17u S1 nuclease per 100ng pUC19 DNA was added into a 25 microL system, respectively, to perform the reaction. The effectiveness of enzyme digestion was realized by electrophoresis in a 1.2% agarose gel. The results showed that along with the increase in enzyme amount from 0.3u to 17u a gradual decrease in the superhelical form, a gradual increase in the linear form and then in the circular form was obvious. The conversion from superhelical form to linear and circular form was directly related to the enzyme amount used. A higher proportion of linear DNA molecules was achieved by using 5 to 17u S1 nuclease per 100ng DNA. Besides, electrophoretic mobility of the S1 nuclease-linearized pUC19 was the same as that of the linear form produced by restriction enzyme digestion. According to the result of phiX174 digested by S1 nuclease it has been proposed that the enzyme cleaves first randomly on one site of one strand, thus converting the superhelical molecules into open circle form, and then on the same site of the complementary strand to produce the linear form. Therefore, the S1 nuclease-linearized DNA molecules are intact in the sense of their length and can be used for cloning. The plasmid-like DNA pC3 from cucumber mitochondria is a double stranded circular DNA molecule with about 550bp and the smallest known plasmid-like DNA in eukaryotic mitochondria. Many attempts have been made to linearize the molecule by using restriction enzymes but failed. Therefore, S1 nuclease was used to linearize pC3 based on the results obtained with pUC19. The linearized pC3 DNA molecules formed a very sharp band in a 2.5% agarose gel after electrophoresis. They were then recovered from the gel, added an "A" tail and ligated with T-vector. After transformation into E. coli JM109 cells, the positive clones were, screened by the blue-white selection. The insert was then cut using restriction enzymes EcoRI and Pst I. The result of electrophoresis shows that the electrophoretic mobility of the insert is just the same as that predicted. A 32 P-labled probe was synthesized using pC3 as the template and Southern blot analysis was carried out. The result shows that the inserted DNA is hybridized to the probe, which indicates that the cloned DNA fragment is from pC3. The sequence information of the insert shows that the plasmid-like DNA pC3 was 537bp in length. The nucleotide sequence was deposited in the GenBank (the accession number is AF522195).
Blotting, Southern ; Cloning, Molecular ; methods ; DNA, Circular ; genetics ; metabolism ; Fungal Proteins ; genetics ; metabolism ; Molecular Sequence Data ; Single-Strand Specific DNA and RNA Endonucleases ; genetics ; metabolism

To establish a prokaryotic expression and purification protocol for nuclease P1 (NP1), we first obtained a synthetic NP1 by splicing 22 oligonucleotides with overlapping PCR. We constructed and transformed a secretory expression vector pMAL-p4X-NP1 into Escherichia coli host strains T7 Express and Origami B (DE3) separately. Then, the recombinant NP1 was purified by amylose affinity chromatography, and its activity, thermo-stability and metal-ion dependence were investigated systematically. The results indicated that the expressed fusion proteins MBP-NP1 (Maltose binding protein-NP1) existed mainly in soluble form both in host strains T7 Express and Origami B (DE3), but the specific activity of recombinant protein from Origami B(DE3) strain was higher than T7 Express strain (75.48 U/mg : 51.50 U/mg). When the MBP-tag was cleaved by protease Factor Xa, the specific activity both increased up to 258.1 U/mg and 139.2 U/mg. The thermal inactivation experiments demonstrated that the recombinant NP1 was quite stable, and it retained more than 90% of original activity after incubated for 30 min at 80 degrees C. Zn2+ (2.0 mmol/L) could increase enzyme activity (to 119.1%), on the contrary, the enzyme activity was reduced by 2.0 mmol/L Cu2+ (to 63.12%). This research realized the functional expression of NP1 in the prokaryotic system for the first time, and provided an alternative pathway for NP1 preparation.
Cloning, Molecular ; Enzyme Stability ; Escherichia coli ; genetics ; metabolism ; Fungal Proteins ; biosynthesis ; genetics ; metabolism ; Genes, Synthetic ; Genetic Vectors ; genetics ; Recombinant Proteins ; biosynthesis ; genetics ; metabolism ; Single-Strand Specific DNA and RNA Endonucleases ; biosynthesis ; genetics ; metabolism