G proteins are heterotrimeric proteins that signal important processes in the cell. There are many types of G proteins categorized as subfamilies. Gα12 is one of the subfamilies and these proteins have been implicated in cancerous progression. There are also proteins many that interact with Gα12, among these are the closely related P114RhoGEF and AKAP-Lbc. The exact structural interaction between Gα12 and P114RhoGEF has yet to be determined but it has been found that, like AKAP-Lbc, P114RhoGEF does interact with Gα12 as it contains similar homology in the area where AKAP-Lbc has shown to bind to Gα12. Through the use of PCR, mutations in the DNA can be engineered to form different constructs of P114RhoGEF that can then be utilized for protein-protein interaction experiments to determine the exact amino acids interacting with the known domain of Gα12. The purpose of the research is to characterize the structural interaction between Gα12 and P114RhoGEF and use this knowledge to further investigate the effects of Gα12 and P114RhoGEF binding in different cell types.
