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Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on May 14, 2008
Nucleic Acids Research 2008 36(10):e62; doi:10.1093/nar/gkm1170
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2008, Vol. 36, No. 10 e62
© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Methods Online

Terminal proteins of Streptomyces chromosome can target DNA into eukaryotic nuclei

Hsiu-Hui Tsai1, Chih-Hung Huang2, Alan M. Lin1 and Carton W. Chen1,*

1Department of Life Sciences and Institute of Genome Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Shih-Pai, Taipei 112 and 2Institute of Biotechnology, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 886 2 2826 7040; Fax: +1 886 2 2826 4930; Email: cwchen{at}ym.edu.tw

Received November 2, 2007. Revised December 18, 2007. Accepted December 19, 2007.

Streptomyces species are highly abundant soil bacteria that possess linear chromosomes (and linear plasmids). The 5' ends of these molecules are covalently bound by terminal proteins (TPs), that are important for integrity and replication of the telomeres. There are at least two types of TPs, both of which contain a DNA-binding domain and a classical eukaryotic nuclear localization signal (NLS). Here we show that the NLS motifs on these TPs are highly efficient in targeting the proteins along with covalently bound plasmid DNA into the nuclei of human cells. The TP-mediated nuclear targeting resembles the inter-kingdom gene transfer mediated by Ti plasmids of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, in which a piece of the Ti plasmid DNA is targeted to the plant nuclei by a covalently bound NLS-containing protein. The discovery of the nuclear localization functions of the Streptomyces TPs not only suggests possible inter-kingdom gene exchanges between Streptomyces and eukaryotes in soil but also provides a novel strategy for gene delivery in humans and other eukaryotes.


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