Staufen purification: challenges and opportunities. Protocols and troubleshooting

Protein purification is required for many experimental assays in molecular biology. However, this is a laborious procedure that can be challenging and prone to several problems (degradation, aggregation, contamination etc.). These issues can jeopardize the quality of the samples and the reliability of the research tests. This article describes four protocols that can be used for the purification of human Staufen1 (and several mutants), an important protein capable of binding RNA and inducing a variety of phenomena crucial for cell biology, including Staufen-mediated mRNA decay (SMD). SMD dysregulation is reported to be involved in tumorigenesis, adipogenesis, neurodegeneration, and cell cycle regulation. The data presented here show that EDTA reduces protein degradation. These protocols can minimize Staufen degradation and aggregation; therefore, they have proven to be efficient and reliable. This article also provides a table of potential problems and their corresponding solutions. Moreover, this work shows that the removal of a Staufen domain (Staufen-Swapping Motif, SSM) highly increases the degradation of this protein. This suggests that SSM plays a role in Staufen integrity. Fast, reliable purification protocols, ideal for Staufen and other water-soluble proteins Staufen purification troubleshooting SSM deletion increases Staufen degradation.