Abstract

Arginine kinase (AK) is a major invertebrate phosphagen kinase that catalyzes the reversible transfer of high energy phosphoryl group of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to arginine, yielding phosphoarginine and adenosine diphosphate. In this study, the 1068 bp open reading frame of a putative Bombyx mori arginine kinase gene (BmAK) was amplified from a pool of B. mori cDNAs and inserted into the prokaryotic expression plasmid pET-28a(+). The recombinant His-tagged BmAK protein was expressed in soluble form in Escherichia coli Rosetta and purified by metal chelating affinity chromatography. The amino acid sequence of recombinant protein was confirmed by mass spectroscopic analysis and the enzyme activity assay that indicated the recombinant protein was able to transfer the gamma phosphoryl group of ATP to arginine.

Key words: Arginine kinase, recombinant protein, enzymatic activity.

Abbreviation

AK, Arginine kinase; CK, creatine kinase; DEPC,diethylpyrocarbonate; IPTG, isopropyl β-D-1-thiogalactopyranoside; PBS,phosphate buffered saline; SDS-PAGE, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis; ORF, open reading frame; PVDF, polyvinylidene fluoride; IgG, immunoglobulin G; PMF, peptide mass fingerprinting; BSA, bovine serum albumin;NADH, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide; BmAK, Bombyx mori arginine kinase gene.