Recombinant p24 Protein Purification

Recombinant p24 proteins were purified from E. coli as previously described (59 (link)) with minor modification. For the expression and purification of the fusion protein, E. coli BL21 strains (RBC Bioscience, Taipei City, Taiwan) were transformed with pET23a-p24. Protein expression was induced by adding 0.4 mM isopropyl β-d-thiogalactoside (Duchefa Biochemie, Haarlem, Netherlands). Bacterial cells were harvested and disrupted by sonication on ice for 10 min. Sonicated lysates were centrifuged at 1,600 × g for 20 min at 4°C, and the pellets containing p24 protein were resuspended in binding buffer containing 4 M urea (Sigma Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA). The proteins were purified using Ni-NTA His binding resin (Merck, Darmstadt, Germany) and eluted with elution buffer (300 mM NaCl, 50 mM sodium phosphate buffer, 250 mM imidazole) containing 4 M urea. Purified proteins were dialyzed serially against the elution buffer to remove imidazole, urea, and residual salts. Purity of p24 protein was estimated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE; 12% gel). The gel was visualized using Coomassie brilliant blue staining methods (60 (link)) (Figure S9 in Supplementary Material).