Claspin recruits Cdc7 kinase for initiation of DNA replication in human cells.

Claspin transmits replication stress signal from ATR to Chk1 effector kinase as a mediator. It also plays a role in efficient replication fork progression during normal growth. Here we have generated conditional knockout of Claspin and show that Claspin knockout mice are dead by E12.

Efficient expression and purification of human replication fork-stabilizing factor, Claspin, from mammalian cells: DNA-binding activity and novel protein interactions.

Purification of recombinant proteins of a large size often poses problems of instability or low expression in bacterial or insect cells. Here, we established a method for a high-level expression of large-sized recombinant proteins in mammalian cells and subsequent purification of the full-length proteins. We applied this method to express human Claspin and Tim-Tipin complex, which play important roles in replication checkpoint responses as fork-stabilizing factors, and successfully purified them in functional forms in amount sufficient for enzymatic characterization.