Rational Design of a Fusion Protein to Exhibit Disulfide-Mediated Logic Gate Behavior

Synthetic cellular logic gates are primarily built from gene circuits owing to their inherent modularity. Single proteins can also possess logic gate functions and offer the potential to be simpler, quicker, and less dependent on cellular resources than gene circuits. However, the design of protein logic gates that are modular and integrate with other cellular components is a considerable challenge. As a step toward addressing this challenge, we describe the design, construction, and characterization of AND, ORN, and YES logic gates built by introducing disulfide bonds into RG13, a fusion of maltose binding protein and TEM-1 β-lactamase for which maltose is an allosteric activator of enzyme activity. We rationally designed these disulfide bonds to manipulate RG13's allosteric regulation mechanism such that the gating had maltose and reducing agents as input signals, and the gates could be toggled between different gating functions using redox agents, although some gates performed suboptimally.