pEGFP-actin was purchased from Clontech. Full-length MRCKα WT and MRCKβ kinase domain (KD) were provided by the T. Leung laboratory, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, A-STAR, Singapore (Leung et al., 1998 (
link); Tan et al., 2001 (
link)). Full-length MRCKα and all the derived constructs (MRCKα 1–478, MRCKα 1–478 KD, MRCKα 1–965, MRCKα 1–965 KD, and MRCKα D478A) were cloned into pDONR/zeo using Gateway BP Clonase as previously described (Gagliardi et al., 2014 (
link)). ROCK1 and ROCK2 constructs were cloned from full-length coding sequences provided by J. Herskowitz (University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL; Swanger et al., 2016 (
link)). From pDONR/zeo, the constructs were transferred through Gateway LR Clonase in the following destination vectors:
pcDNADEST47 (C-Term GFP), in
pcDNA-DEST53 (N-Term GFP), in pcDNA-C-mCherry (C-term mCherry), and in
pDEST27 (GST-N-Term Tag), all from Invitrogen.
Dual-tagged (GST and GFP) constructs for screening of caspase-cleavage sequences were prepared as follows: GFP was amplified by PCR using primer couples for the BP Gateway reaction, where each forward primer includes one sequence coding for the polypeptides to be tested for caspase-cleavage (eight amino acids, six preceding the putative cleavage site and two after). Once obtained by cloning in pDONR/zeo, constructs were moved in
pDEST27 (GST-N-Term Tag).
Gagliardi P.A., Somale D., Puliafito A., Chiaverina G., di Blasio L., Oneto M., Bianchini P., Bussolino F, & Primo L. (2018). MRCKα is activated by caspase cleavage to assemble an apical actin ring for epithelial cell extrusion. The Journal of Cell Biology, 217(1), 231-249.