ARTIFICIAL EXON SHUFFLING: CONSTRUCTION OF HYBRID cDNAS CONTAINING DOMAINS OF TISSUE-TYPE PLASMINOGEN ACTIVATOR (T-PA) AND UROKINASE (u-PA)

The intriguing finding that functions of t-PA coincide with structural domains and that these domains occur in related proteins, has been the basis to construct hybrid proteins by artificial exon shuffling to prove the conservation of functions in the shuffled domains. The heavy chain (Hch) of t-PA mediates both binding to fibrin and stimulation of plasminogen activator activity via its Finger- and Kringle-2 domain, whereas the light chain (Lch) contains the serine protease moiety of the protein. The Hch of u-PA is very homologous to the Lch of t-PA, but exhibits a higher plasminogen activator activity. This activity of u-PA is not stimulated by fibrin. We employed the ‘M13 in vitro outlooping’ technique to fuse the Hch of t-PA cDNA and the Hch of u-PA cDNA, to create two different hybrid cDNAs. On one hybrid cDNA, the t-PA and the u-PA sequences are coupled precisely at the exon-intron boundaries of the corresponding genes, while the other hybrid cDNA lacks a u-PA segment at the junction, encoding 13 amino acids of u-PA. The hybrid cDNAs were transiently expressed in mouse Ltk- cells and the recombinant proteins were characterized. The plasminogen activator activity of these proteins was determined in an indirect amidolytic assay, using plasminogen and the chromogenic substrate S2251. As anticipated, the activity of both t-PA/u-PA hybrid proteins is stimulated by fibrin, however, not to the same extent as t-PA. Remarkably, we found a decreased inhibition of the hybrid proteins by the endothelial plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI-1) as compared to t-PA and u-PA, although stable complexes between the hybrid proteins and the inhibitor are formed. We conclude that functions of structural domains are maintained during exon shuffling