[Construction of pMH, a convenient Escherichia coli protein expression vector]

Here we describe the construction of a new vector, pMH, designed for protein expression in E. coli. The vector provides inducible and powerful T7 RNA polymerase driven transcription of the sequences introduced, and a polylinker comprising now 10 most widely used restriction sites, which allows virtually any sequence to be cloned. Cloning in-frame with the N-terminal (c-myc)3-(His)6-tag makes it possible, first, to easily affinity purify the proteins being expressed and, second, to detect the recombinant proteins with the antibodies specific for any of the tags when protein-specific antibodies are unavailable. General utility of pMH was demonstrated by successful expression in E. coli and further purification of Drosophila melanogaster Chriz (CG10712) product and of a number of its C-terminal truncations, with the approximate protein yeild constituting 10 mg/l culture.