Lazaridis_2014_Int.J.Biol.Macromol_63_210

The muscle nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (AChR) has a central role in neuromuscular transmission, and is the major target in the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis (MG). We created mutants of the extracellular domains (ECDs) of the human alpha1, beta1, delta and varepsilon AChR subunits, whereby their Cys-loop was exchanged for that of the acetylcholine binding protein. The mutants were expressed in Pichia pastoris and had improved solubility resulting in 2- to 43-fold higher expression yields compared to the wild type. An additional mutant was created for the alpha1 ECD restoring its glycosylation site within the Cys-loop and its alpha-bungarotoxin binding ability. Furthermore, we constructed dimeric and pentameric concatamers of the mutant ECDs. All concatamers were successfully expressed as soluble secreted proteins, although the pentamers had about 10-fold lower expression than the dimers and were more susceptible to fragmentation. Initial crystallizations with the mutant ECDs were promising, and we reproducibly obtained crystals of the beta1 ECD, diffracting at approximately 12A. Further optimization is underway to obtain crystals suitable for high resolution crystallography. The proteins described herein are useful tools in structural studies of the human muscle AChR and can be used in applications requiring high yields such as therapeutic adsorbents for MG autoantibodies.