AirID, a novel proximity biotinylation enzyme, for analysis of protein-protein interactions.

: Proximity biotinylation based on Escherichia coli BirA enzymes like BioID (BirA*) and TurboID is a key technology for identifying proteins interacting with a target protein in a cell or organism. However, there have been some improvements in the enzymes for that purpose. Here, we demonstrate a novel BirA enzyme, AirID (ancestral BirA for proximity-dependent biotin identification), which was designed de novo using an ancestral enzyme reconstruction algorithm and metagenome data. AirID-fusion proteins like AirID-p53 or AirID-IκBα indicated biotinylation of MDM2 or RelA, respectively, in vitro and in cells, respectively. AirID-CRBN showed the pomalidomide-dependent biotinylation of IKZF1 and SALL4 in vitro. AirID-IκBα biotinylated the endogenous CUL4 and RBX1 in the CRL4CRBN complex based on the streptavidin pull-down assay. LC-MS/MS analysis of cells stably expressing AirID-IκBα showed top-level biotinylation of RelA proteins. These results indicate that AirID is a novel enzyme for analysing protein-protein interactions.