help with expressing a membrane protein

[radioheadhead]

Hello all,

I am attempting to express a Type I transmembrane protein that gets most of its extracellular domain cleaved by MMPs on the cell surface, leaving just a small portion outside the membrane. My issue is that this cleaved species does not have a methionine as the N-terminal residue, since it is cleaved at a different sequence of AAs. If I wanted to express this particular form on a plasmid, how can I ensure that my recombinant protein will have the same AA sequence without an N-ter methionine?

I am thinking that cloning a canonical signal peptide onto the 5' end of my gene just before my desired sequence starts might work, anyone done something similar or have other ideas?