Appeal No. 1998-0053
Application 08/444,628
DECISION ON APPEAL2
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the final rejection of claims 1, 2 and
4, the only claims remaining in the application. The claims are reproduced below:
1. A truncated mutant, SEQ ID NO:1, of the 92 kDa gelatinase having an amino
acid sequence as shown in FIG. 2 consisting of residues 106-216 fused to residues 391-
443 of the parent molecule.
2. The truncated mutant of claim 1 containing an additional Met-Gly dipeptide at the
N-terminus.
4. The method of modifying the 92 kDa gelatinase protein to make it essentially
inactive against insoluble elastin but to remain catalytically active which comprises fusing
amino acid residues 106-216 to residues 391-443 of the parent 92 kDa gelatinase protein
molecule to thereby provide the truncated mutant having an amino acid sequence as
shown in Fig. 2 (SEQ ID NO:1).
The references relied on by the examiner are:
Goldberg et al. (Goldberg) 4,992,537 Feb. 12, 1991
Liotta et al. (Liotta) 5,270,447 Dec. 14, 1993
Hirel et al. (Hirel), “Extent of N-terminal methionine excision from Escherichia coli proteins
is governed by the side-chain length of the penultimate amino acid,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
USA, Vol. 86, pp. 8247-8251 (November 1989).
Thomas et al. (Thomas), “Expression in Escherichia coli and characterization of the heat-
stable inhibitor of the cAMP-dependent protein kinase,” Journal of Biological Chemistry,
Vol. 266, No. 17, pp. 10906-10911 (June 15, 1991).
2As a preliminary matter, we note that this appeal is related to an appeal in
Application Serial No. 08/357,820 (Appeal No. 1997-2140). We have considered the two
appeals together.
2
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