Site-Specific Antibody Fragment Conjugates for Reversible Staining in Fluorescence Microscopy

Protein-Templated Click Ligation Reaction Triggered by Protein-Split Aptamer Interactions

DNA-templated reactions have found wide applications in sensing and drug discovery. However, this strategy has been limited to the use of nucleic acids as templating elements to direct the proximity effect. Herein, we describe a versatile protein-templated split aptamer click ligation reaction (PT-SpA-CLR) in which the protein template-induced covalent proximity ligation of split aptamer elements enables translating protein/aptamer binding events into the output of ligated DNA products. A ligation yield of >80% is observed for three model protein templates, including VEGF165, PDGF-BB, and SARS-CoV-2 S1. The ligation reaction compensates for the weakness of reduced binding affinity resulting from splitting the aptamer, as evidenced by an approximately 2-fold lower dissociation constant than the non-ligated system. This newly developed PT-SpA-CLR strategy is further integrated with colorimetric or fluorescent reporting mechanisms to achieve easy-to-use and low-cost biosensors utilizing ligation to produce a fully active G-quadruplex or an RNA-cleaving DNAzyme to report protein binding. Both assays can achieve specific detection of an intended protein target with a limit of detection at the picomolar level even when challenged in biological samples. The combined PT-SpA-CLR and versatile sensing strategies offer attractive universal platforms for efficient detection of protein biomarkers.

TSWIFT, a novel method for iterative staining of embedded and mounted human brain sections

Comprehensive characterization of protein networks in mounted brain tissue represents a major challenge in brain and neurodegenerative disease research. In this study, we develop a simple staining method, called TSWIFT, to iteratively stain pre-mounted formalin fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) brain sections, thus enabling high-dimensional sample phenotyping. We show that TSWIFT conserves tissue architecture and allows for relabeling a single mounted FFPE sample more than 10 times, even after prolonged storage at 4 °C. Our results establish TSWIFT as an efficient method to obtain integrated high-dimensional knowledge of cellular proteomes by analyzing mounted FFPE human brain tissue.

TSWIFT, a novel method for iterative staining of embedded and mounted human brain sections

Comprehensive characterization of protein networks in mounted brain tissue represents a major challenge in brain and neurodegenerative disease research. In this study, we develop a simple staining method, called TSWIFT, to iteratively stain pre-mounted formalin fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) brain sections, thus enabling high-dimensional sample phenotyping. We show that TSWIFT conserves tissue architecture and allows for relabeling a single mounted FFPE sample more than 10 times, even after prolonged storage at 4 °C. Using TSWIFT, we profile the abundance and localization of the HSP70 family chaperones HSC70 (HSPA8) and BiP (HSPA5) in mounted human brain tissue. Our results establish TSWIFT as an efficient method to obtain integrated high-dimensional knowledge of cellular proteomes by analyzing mounted FFPE human brain tissue.

Protein-DNA Conjugates with a Discrete Number of Oligonucleotide Strands for Highly Reproducible Protein Quantification by the DNA Proximity Assay

Protein-oligonucleotide conjugates are increasingly used as detection probes in biological applications such as proximity sensing and spatial biology. The preparation of high-quality conjugate probes as starting reagents is critical for achieving good and consistent performance, which we demonstrate via the DNA proximity assay (DPA) for the one-pot quantification of protein targets. We first established a complete conjugation and anion-exchange chromatography purification workflow to reproducibly obtain pure subpopulations of protein probes carrying a discrete number of oligonucleotide strands. A systematic study using the purified conjugate sub-populations confirmed that the order of conjugate (number of oligonucleotides per protein) and its purity (the absence of the unconjugated antibody) were important for ensuring optimal and reproducible assay performance. The streamlined workflow was then successfully used to conjugate a pair of universal DPA initiator oligonucleotides onto a wide range of binders including antibodies, nanobodies, and antigens which enabled the versatile detection of different types of proteins such as cytokines, total antibodies, and specific antibody isotypes. The good assay robustness (the inter-assay coefficient of variation lower than 5%) and linear calibration curve was achieved across all targets with just a single mix-and-incubate reaction step and a short reaction time of 30 min. We anticipate the streamlined protein-oligonucleotide probe preparation workflow developed in this work to have broad utility across applications leveraging the specificity of protein bio-recognition with the programmability of DNA hybridization.

Protein-Templated Reactions Using DNA-Antibody Conjugates

DNA-templated chemical reactions have found wide applications in drug discovery, programmed multistep synthesis, nucleic acid detection, and targeted drug delivery. The control of these reactions has, however, been limited to nucleic acid hybridization as a means to direct the proximity between reactants. In this work a system capable of translating protein-protein binding events into a DNA-templated reaction which leads to the covalent formation of a product is introduced. Protein-templated reactions by employing two DNA-antibody conjugates that are both able to recognize the same target protein and to colocalize a pair of reactant DNA strands able to undergo a click reaction are achieved. Two individual systems, each responsive to human serum albumin (HSA) and human IgG, are engineered and it is demonstrated that, while no reaction occurs in the absence of proteins, both protein-templated reactions can occur simultaneously in the same solution without any inter-system crosstalk.

Site-Specific Antibody Fragment Conjugates for Reversible Staining in Fluorescence Microscopy

Antibody conjugates have taken a great leap forward as tools in basic and applied molecular life sciences that was enabled by the development of chemoselective reactions for the site-specific modification of proteins. Antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates combine the antibody's target specificity with the reversible, sequence-encoded binding properties of oligonucleotides like DNAs or peptide nucleic acids (PNAs), allowing sequential imaging of large numbers of targets in a single specimen. In this report, we use the Tub-tag® technology in combination with Cu-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition for the site-specific conjugation of single DNA and PNA strands to an eGFP-binding nanobody. We show binding of the conjugate to recombinant eGFP and subsequent sequence-specific annealing of fluorescently labelled imager strands. Furthermore, we reversibly stain eGFP-tagged proteins in human cells, thus demonstrating the suitability of our conjugation strategy to generate antibody-oligonucleotides for reversible immunofluorescence imaging.