Isolation of Recombinant IgV-CD47 Fragment to Probe the Interaction Between CD47 and Mac-1 Integrin

CD47 is a cell surface receptor expressed on many cells in the body. It has many immune functions such as marking host cells as “self” and the activation of apoptosis through phagocytosis. Mac-1 is a major integrin on myeloid cells and has been implicated in several different macrophage immune functions. Previous studies from Dr. Ugarova’s lab demonstrated CD47 may form a complex with Mac-1 through the cis-interaction and could regulate Mac-1-dependent macrophage functions. To localize the binding site for Mac-1 in CD47, the extracellular domain of CD47 IgV was isolated as GST-fusion protein from E. coli cells. The recombinant fusion protein is being used in current studies with cell adhesion assays and immunoprecipitation to determine the complementary binding site in Mac-1.