Peptide Assemblies in Living Cells. Methods for Detecting Protein-Protein Interactions†

In mammalian cells, protein-protein interactions constitute essential regulatory steps that modulate the activity of signaling pathways. To understand the complicated mechanisms of the interactions in living cells, chemical crosslinking or immunoprecipitation has extensively been used. However, such biochemical methods require cell disruption and do not necessarily preserve all interactions intact. In recent years, several elegant approaches have been developed towards understanding the interactions. A common advantage of these new approaches is direct observation of the interaction in living cells without the need for disrupting the cells. We describe herein recent advances of those methods including our recent works based on protein splicing for detecting protein-protein interactions in vivo and highlight some potential applications of these techniques.

Keywords:

• Protein-protein Interaction
• Protein Splicing
• Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP)
• Luciferase