A new approach for cellular injury

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Extracellular signalling is usually transduced to cells through binding of signalling molecules to the receptors on the cell surface or internalization of them by endocytosis machinery. Recently some proteins have been found to penetrate directly from extracellular space to cytoplasm and nucleus, and function there. VP22, a herpes simplex virus I protein, is such a protein that can penetrate to cytoplasm and nucleus. Interestingly, a chimeric protein with VP22 was also demonstrated to preserve such an ability. In this study, we made chimeric proteins with VP22 and HSP27, a chaperone that has a cytoprotective ability against cellular stresses, to explore a new drug delivery system. One chimeric VP22-HSP27 was an unstable protein that is degraded immediately after synthesis, the other VP22-HSP27 was more stable and we have detected its expression by immunofluorescence and western blot. The cells expressing this protein , unexpectedly, revealed sensitive to cellular stresses, which suggested the chimeric VP22-HSP27 had a dominant-negative character against endogenous HSP27. Further efforts making chimeric proteins with VP22 and HSP27, or other useful proteins will be explored.