Characterization of DNA-binding proteins

Christian Biertümpfel

Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Am Klopferspitz 18, 821 52 Martinsried, Germany

All organisms use a plethora of proteins interacting with DNA. They fulfill essential roles during cell homeostasis and proliferation. The functions of DNA-binding proteins are divers and reach from modifying, labeling, checking, processing, regulating, opening, locking, shielding, degrading, editing, transcribing to structuring DNA. Studying DNA-binding proteins is often a challenging task as their function and abundance is tightly controlled, and usually restricted to certain conditions, functional states or cell cycle stages. However, remarkable findings about their cellular roles can be discovered when taking the properties and functional requirements of DNA-binding proteins into account. The interaction with DNA facilitates additional strategies for the purification of DNA-binding proteins and it offers many methods for their functional characterization. The presentation will focus on special features of DNA-binding proteins and techniques for their functional characterization. In addition, various ways of forming, stabilizing and analyzing protein-DNA complexes will be discussed. Understanding the mode of action of proteins interacting with DNA is crucial not only to comprehend complex biological processes but also to shed light onto their defects and roles in diseases like cancer.