Tetracycline repressor-based mammalian two-hybrid systems.

The study of protein-protein interactions is critical for the understanding and regulation of biological systems. To that end, yeast two-hybrid systems have been used to study protein-protein interactions in vivo, but they frequently suffer from a high incidence of false positives when applied to mammalian systems. A novel mammalian two-hybrid system has recently been developed which exhibits lower background and higher sensitivity than earlier mammalian two-hybrid systems. It has successfully detected interactions with dissociation constants ranging from 0.99 nM to 55 μM. The system was built upon the tetracycline repressor-tetracycline operator interaction and is suitable for use in the study of most, if not all, mammalian protein-protein interactions.