Specific isolation by anhydrotrypsin-agarose chromatography of a recombinant protein tagged with an affinity tail arginine at the C-terminus.

A characteristic property of anhydrotrypsin, i.e., its ability to strongly bind C-terminal arginine, proved to be useful as a tool for specific enrichment of a recombinant protein. An arginine tail was introduced at the C-terminus, for example, of a human beta-galactoside-binding lectin by site-directed mutagenesis. The resulting mutant recombinant lectin, which retained sugar-binding activity as high as the wild-type lectin, became recognizable by anhydrotrypsin. It was adsorbed on an anhydrotrypsin-agarose column and eluted with benzoylglycylarginine. The added arginine tail could be specifically removed by carboxypeptidase B. When E. coli lyzate containing the mutant lectin was applied to the column more than 10-fold enrichment of the mutant lectin was attained. This procedure should be generally applicable and may be advantageous because the addition of a single arginine residue may have minimal effect on the structure and function of the target protein.