Beyond Plant Disease
Potyvirus RNA codes for at least 7 different proteins. One of them is a protease. The TEV protease is a highly site-specific protease that biochemists have used to their advantage to create a protein purification system by incorporating TEV protease's recognition site into protein purification tags.
A gene construct is created containing the protein of interest fused to a TEV protease recognition site, followed by an affinity tag, such as a Polyhistidine-tag. Following affinity chromatography, the purified protein is then treated with TEV protease. TEV protease cleaves at its recognition site, removing the affinity tag. This allows for affinity purification of proteins that are not well-behaved when fused to protein tags. PMID 12963335
Read more about this topic: Tobacco Etch Virus
Famous quotes containing the words plant and/or disease:
“The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
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—Sarah Josepha Buell Hale 1788–1879, U.S. novelist, poet and women’s magazine editor. American Ladies Magazine, pp. 36-40 (December 1828)