Design and purification of active truncated phosphoinositide 3-kinase gamma protein constructs for structural studies

•Purified active PI3Kγ complexes with truncated p101 regulatory subunit.•Deletion of flexible regions in p101 was guided by HDX-MS.•One deletion in p101 does not affect protein stability.•One deletion sensitizes PI3Kγ enzyme toward GPCR stimulation.•Truncated PI3Kγ construct is suitable for high-resolution structural studies.

Phosphoinositide 3-kinase gamma (PI3Kγ) is a lipid kinase that plays a crucial role in cell migration, chemotaxis, oxidative burst and myocardial contractility. It is activated downstream of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and small GTPases of Ras superfamily. PI3Kγ is a heterodimer composed of a catalytic and a regulatory subunit that is expressed mostly in hematopoietic cells and in the heart. Although it has attracted a lot of attention because of its link with tumor inflammation and heart diseases, its regulation is still not fully understood. This can be attributed to the absence of high-resolution structural details of the PI3Kγ heterodimer. Here we describe the design and purification of PI3Kγ constructs where flexible loops in the regulatory subunit have been removed based on structural information obtained by hydrogen/deuterium exchange – mass spectrometry (HDX-MS). The soluble constructs retain both basal activity and sensitivity to GPCR stimulation, and are thus an optimal tool to further explore their regulation using a structure-based approach.