Affinity anchors: overview of popular tags for modern molecular biology

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Abstract

In the functioning of living systems, intermolecular contacts, including protein-protein interactions, play a crucial role. One of the main methods for studying them is affinity purification coupled with mass spectrometry (AP-MS). This approach relies on the refinement of epitope tags, short genetic modifications of proteins, which subsequently enable the “capture” of target molecules. The review aims to compare the most popular epitope tags and discuss traditional and innovative studies in which they are used. The primary goal of this manuscript is to assess how close the scientific community is to creating a “perfect” tag that meets the needs of most researchers applying tags to address a wide range of molecular biology tasks.

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P. A. Kryukova

Orekhovich Institute of Biomedical Chemistry

Email: inst@ibmc.msk.ru
Russian Federation, Moscow

O. I. Kiseleva

Orekhovich Institute of Biomedical Chemistry

Email: inst@ibmc.msk.ru
Russian Federation, Moscow

I. Yu. Kurbatov

Orekhovich Institute of Biomedical Chemistry

Email: inst@ibmc.msk.ru
Russian Federation, Moscow

E. V. Poverennaya

Orekhovich Institute of Biomedical Chemistry

Author for correspondence.
Email: inst@ibmc.msk.ru
Russian Federation, Moscow

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Supplementary files

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2. Fig. 1. Histogram of the distribution of publications mentioning epitope tags by occurrence in the PubMed repository.

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3. Fig. 2. Radar diagram characterizing the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular epitopes. The center of the circle corresponds to the lowest values, the periphery to the highest.

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