Advantages of mRNA display selections over other selection techniques for investigation of protein–protein interactions

Abstract

mRNA display is a genotype–phenotype conjugation method that allows for amplification-based, iterative rounds of in vitro selection to be applied to peptides and proteins. mRNA display can be used to display both long natural protein and short synthetic peptide libraries with unusually high diversities for the investigation of protein–protein interactions. Here, we summarize the advantages of mRNA display by comparing it with other widely used peptide or protein-selection techniques, and discuss various applications of this technique in studying protein–protein interactions.

Keywords::

• directed evolution
• high-throughput screening
• in vitro selection
• mRNA display
• protein domain library
• protein–protein interaction
• proteome library
• random peptide library

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The mRNA display work in the Liu laboratory was supported by start-up funds from the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences and Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (NC, USA) and by NIH grants NS047650, CA119343, DA025702 and CA151652, and American Cancer Society grant RSG-TBE-110472. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.