Abstract

The tumor suppressor p53 is conformationally unstable at physiological temperature. Even the activated p53delta30 variant, which lacks the self-inhibiting carboxy terminal domain, has a half-life of only 8 min at 37 degrees C in vitro. We have developed a genetic approach to identify p53 variants that stabilize the active conformation. The human p53delta30 gene was randomly mutated, and the resulting library was expressed in Escherichia coli under conditions that apparently denatured the parental protein. Stable p53 variants were identified based on their ability to specifically bind a p53 consensus site. The initial thermostable variants were randomly recombined by DNA shuffling, and substitutions that were functionally additive or synergistic were identified in a second more stringent round of screening. The DNA binding activity of N239Y/N268D/E336V p53delta30 variant has a half-life of 100 min at 37 degrees C, 12 times longer than that of the parental protein. The thermostable variants should be more amenable to crystallographic studies and more effective in gene therapies than the wild-type protein.