Cysteine-depleted hydrophobin fusion proteins, their production and use thereof

1. A polypeptide of the general structural formula (I)

X n —C 1 —X 1-50 —C 2 —X 0-5 —C 3 —X p —C 4 —X 1-100 —C 5 —X 1-50 —C 6 —X 0-5 —C 7 —X 1-50 —C 8 —X m   (I)

wherein each X is independently any of the 20 naturally occurring amino acids, n and m independently are numbers from 0 to 500, p is a number from 1 to 250, C is cysteine, alanine, serine, glycine, methionine or threonine wherein at least four residues designated as C are cysteine, at least one of the peptide sequences abbreviated as X n or X m or X p is a peptide sequence of at least 20 amino acids that is not naturally linked to a hydrophobin and X n or X m comprises a polypeptide sequence selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NOs: 16 and 18, and wherein the polypeptide changes the contact angle of a drop of water on a glass surface by at least 20° after coating the glass surface with the polypeptide.

2. The polypeptide of claim 1 wherein the structural formula (I) comprises a Class I hydrophobin.

3. The polypeptide of claim 1 wherein the structural formula (I) comprises a hydrophobin selected from the group consisting of dewA, rodA, sc3, hypA, hypB, basf1, and basf2.

4. The polypeptide of claim 1 wherein the structural formula (I) comprises a sequence selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NOs: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14.

5. The polypeptide of claim 1 wherein X n or X m or X p is a (His) 4-10 sequence.

6. The polypeptide of claim 1 wherein the structural formula (I) comprises polypeptides selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NOs: 20, 22, and 24.

7. A nucleic acid encoding the polypeptide of claim 1 .

8. A method of producing a polypeptide by expressing the nucleic acid of claim 7 in a host organism and isolating the polypeptide.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the host organism is E. coli.

10. A method for coating a surface with a polypeptide, the method comprising coating the surface with the polypeptide of claim 1 .