Fig. 1

Cloning and expression of full-length and two deletion mutations of UL76. a Schematic depicting of composition of UL76. Amino acids 1–190 represent the conserved N terminal and amino acids 187–325 stand for the varied C terminal. b Double digestion to verify the accuracy of recombinant plasmids construction. Lane 1–4: Double digestion of pEGFP-N1, pEGFP-UL76, pEGFP-UL76N, pEGFP-UL76C respectively. Lane 5–8: Represent for pEGFP-N1, pEGFP-UL76, pEGFP-UL76N, pEGFP-UL76C respectively. c Western blot to detect different EGFP-fusion proteins. The predict MW of each fusion protein are: EGFP (27KD), EGFP-UL76 (63KD), EGFP-UL76N (49KD), EGFP-UL76C (41KD) respectively. Degradation of EGFP-tag from the fusion proteins were found in three transfection groups. Four bands have been detected in the pEGFP-UL76 group. This result indicated that there are three cleavage sites in the EGFP-UL76 protein. All bands presented on the membrane are numbered in order (from 1–9). d Deduced compositions of bands shown in c. Band 2 represents the full-length of UL76 and EGFP fusion protein. Band 3 indicates the cleavage happened in the early N-term of UL76, while band 4 stands for peptide cleaved between N-term and C-term of UL76. Since bands with predicted MW have been presented in each transfection group, the three recombinant plasmids were recognized as being expressed correctly