Crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction studies of recombinant staphylokinase

Staphylokinase, a fibrin-specific plasminogen activator, was highly expressed in Escherichia coli and purified by ion-exchange and gel-filtration chromatography. The purified recombinant staphylokinase was fully active and readily crystallized against 1.2 M sodium citrate in 100mM Tris-HCl buffer at pH8.0 using the hanging-drop method. Crystals of staphylokinase diffract to better than 2.2 Å resolution. The crystal belongs to the tetragonal space group P4₁2₁2 or its enantiomorph with unit-cell parameters a = b = 67.5, c = 150.1 Å. There are two molecules in the asymmetric unit. In this paper, we described the first crystallization of a kind of plasminogen activator and present the results of preliminary X-ray diffraction data from the native protein.