Yellow lupine cyclophilin interacts with nucleic acids

To investigate properties of yellow lupine cytosolic cyclophilin, an expression vector pET15CYP was constructed. The CyP cDNA ( GenBank accession no. Y16088) reveals an open reading frame of 172 amino acids with the conserved tryptophan residue at position 128 and an insertion of seven amino acids spanning positions 48-54. Yellow lupine cyclophilin, purified after expression in E. coli cells, exhibits peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase activity when assayed with a synthetic oligopeptide. We have demonstrated that the recombinant cyclophilin is able to interact with nucleic acids, both single and double stranded DNA fragments as well as RNA.