1978 Volume 84 Issue 5 Pages 1021-1029
The conditions of digestion of colicin E3 with trypsin were examined to obtain an active fragment (T2A) of colicin E3, and a method suitable for large-scale preparation of T2A was developed. The T2A preparation thus obtained was homogeneous on SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and the molecular weight was estimated to be about 11, 000. T2A was composed of 97 amino acid residues and was rich in basic amino acids; methionine, valine, cysteine, and cystine were absent. The N-terminal residue was lysine and the structure near the C-terminus was -Lys-Lys-Tyr-Leu. Since T2A had no lysine or arginine residue at the C-terminus and since the C-terminal structure was identical to that of protein A, it was concluded that T2A was derived from the C-terminal region of protein A.
No clear differences were detected among T2A preparations obtained from 3 different fractions of colicin E3, suggesting that the apparent homogeneity of colicin E3 does not involve the T2A region.