Insertion mutagenesis of the lac repressor and its implications for structure-function analysis

We recently developed a simple technique for the generation of relatively large (31-codon) insertion mutations in cloned genes. To test whether the analysis of such mutations could provide insight into structure-function relationships in proteins, we examined a set of insertion mutants of the Escherichia coli Inc repressor (LacI). Representatives of several LacI mutant classes were recovered, including mutants which exhibit fully active, inducer-insensitive, or weak dominant-negative phenotypes. The various properties of the recovered mutants agree with previous biophysical, biochemical, and genetic data for the protein. In particular, the results support the prior designation of mutationally tolerant spacer regions of LacI as well as proposed differences in dimerization interactions among regions of the protein core domain. These findings suggest that the analysis of 31-codon insertion mutations may provide a simple approach for characterizing structure-function relationships in proteins for which high-resolution structures are not available.