PTEN-lipid Binding Assay

Abstract

The lipid and protein interactions are an integral and important part of many cellular signaling pathways. The understanding of the selective and specific interaction of the given lipid molecule with the target protein is required for studying cellular signaling. In this assay, different lipids are spotted onto a nitrocellulose membrane to which they attach. Then the membrane is incubated with a lipid binding protein possessing an epitope tag. The protein binds to the lipid which is detected by immunoblotting with an antibody recognizing the epitope tag (see Figure 1). PTEN is an important tumor suppressor which functions as both protein and lipid phosphatase. The primary physiological substrate of PTEN is signaling lipid PtdIns (3, 4, 5) P3, by dephosphrylating PtdIns (3, 4, 5) P3 to PtdIns (4, 5) P2 PTEN negatively regulates PI3K signaling and mediates its tumor-suppressor function by inactivating downstream oncogenic AKT-mediated signaling. The PTEN lipid binding assay is conducted to study the specific binding of PTEN to different lipid molecules.