Recombinant Histones as an Instrument for the Delivery of Nucleic Acids into Eukaryotic Cells

Naturally occurring positively charged proteins can be promising carriers for nucleic acid transport in gene therapy. The most attractive alternative among them is histones. In this work, we describe expression and purification of recombinant human histones H2A and H2B and of chimeric histone H2A with HIV-1 TAT fragment (TAT-peptide). The proposed method of purification of histone proteins can significantly reduce the content of bacterial endotoxins in the target preparation, which makes it possible to use these proteins in in vivo experiments. The transfection ability of plasmid DNA complexes with core histones H2A and H2B and the chimeric histone was demonstrated. A highly specific and efficient transfection of human HT1080 cell line with the use of histones H2A and H2B was detected, whereas transfection by plasmid DNA complexes with chimeric H2A-TAT protein was observed for many cell lines.