Archaea
Volume 1 (2004), Issue 4, Pages 247-254
doi:10.1155/2004/743956
Research Article

Interactions between RNase P protein subunits in Archaea

Thomas A. Hall1 and James W. Brown2

1Ibis Therapeutics, 2292 Faraday Ave., Carlsbad, CA 92008, USA
2Department of Microbiology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA

Received 6 October 2003; Accepted 22 December 2003

Copyright © 2004 Hindawi Publishing Corporation. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A yeast two-hybrid system was used to identify protein–protein interactions between the ribonuclease P (RNase P) protein subunits Mth11p, Mth687p, Mth688p and Mth1618p from the archaeon Methanothermobacter thermoautotrophicus. Clear interactions between Mth688p and Mth687p, and between Mth1618p and Mth11p, were confirmed by HIS3 and LacZ reporter expression. Weaker interactions of Mth687p and Mth688p with Mth11p, and Mth11p with itself, are also suggested. These interactions resemble, and confirm, those previously seen among the homologs of these proteins in the more complex yeast RNase P holoenzyme.