Plasmids with E2 epitope tags: tagging modules for N- and C-terminal PCR-based gene targeting in both budding and fission yeast, and inducible expression vectors for fission yeast.

A single-step PCR-based epitope tagging enables fast and efficient gene targeting with various epitope tags. This report presents a series of plasmids for the E2 epitope tagging of proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. E2Tags are 10-amino acids (epitope E2a: SSTSSDFRDR)- and 12 amino acids (epitope E2b: GVSSTSSDFRDR)-long peptides derived from the E2 protein of bovine papillomavirus type 1. The modules for C-terminal tagging with E2a and E2b epitopes were constructed by the modification of the pYM-series plasmid. The N-terminal E2a and E2b tagging modules were based on pOM-series plasmid. The pOM-series plasmids were selected for this study because of their use of the Cre-loxP recombination system. The latter enables a marker cassette to be removed after integration into the loci of interest and, thereafter, the tagged protein is expressed under its endogenous promoter. Specifically for fission yeast, high copy pREP plasmids containing the E2a epitope tag as an N-terminal or C-terminal tag were constructed. The properties of E2a and E2b epitopes and the sensitivity of two anti-E2 monoclonal antibodies (5E11 and 3F12) were tested using several S. cerevisiae and Sz. pombe E2-tagged strains.