Co-immunoprecipitation Assay for Studying Functional Interactions Between Receptors and Enzymes

Receptor-associated enzymes are the major mediators of cellular activation. These enzymes are regulated, at least in part, by physical interactions with cytoplasmic tails of the receptors. The interactions often occur through specific protein domains and result in activation of the enzymes. There are several methods to study interactions between proteins. While co-immunoprecipitation is commonly used to study domains that are required for protein-protein interactions, there are no assays that document the contribution of specific domains to activity of the recruited enzymes at the same time. Accordingly, the method described here combines co-immunoprecipitation and an on-bead enzymatic activity assay for simultaneous evaluation of interactions between proteins and associated enzymatic activation. The goal of this protocol is to identify the domains that are critical for physical interactions between a protein and enzyme and the domains that are obligatory for complete activation of the enzyme. The importance of this assay is demonstrated, as certain receptor protein domains contribute to the binding of the enzyme to the cytoplasmic tail of the receptor, while other domains are necessary to regulate the function of the same enzyme.