The structural gene of elastase strain K (elastase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain K), namely HindIII1500PstI, was successfully sequenced to contain 1497 bp. The amino acid sequence, deduced from the nucleotide sequence, revealed that the mature elastase consists of 301 amino acids, with a molecular mass of 33.1 kDa, and contains a conserved motif HEXXH, zinc ligands and residues involved in the catalysis of elastase strain K. The structural gene was successfully cloned to a shuttle vector, pUCP19, and transformed into Escherichia coli strains TOP10, KRX, JM109 and Tuner™ pLacI as well as P. aeruginosa strains PA01 (A.T.C.C. 47085) and S5, with detection of significant protein expression. Overexpression was detected from transformants KRX/pUCP19/HindIII1500PstI of E. coli and PA01/pUCP19/HindIII1500PstI of P. aeruginosa, with increases in elastolytic activity to 13.83- and 5.04-fold respectively relative to their controls. In addition, recombinant elastase strain K showed considerable stability towards numerous organic solvents such as methanol, ethanol, acetone, toluene, undecan-1-ol and n-dodecane, which typically pose a detrimental effect on enzymes; our finding provides further information to support the potential application of the enzyme in synthetic industries, particularly peptide synthesis.
A broad substrate specificity enzyme that can act on a wide range of substrates would be an asset in industrial application. T1 lipase known to have broad substrate specificity in its native form apparently exhibits the same active sites as polyhydroxylalkanoate (PHA) depolymerase. PhaZ6Pl is one of the PHA depolymerases that can degrade semicrystalline P(3HB). The objective of this study is to enable T1 lipase to degrade semicrystalline P(3HB) similar to PhaZ6Pl while maintaining its native function. A structural study on PhaZ6Pl contains no lid in its structure and therefore T1 lipase was designed with removal of its lid region. BSLA lipase was chosen as the reference protein for T1 lipase modification since it contains no lid. Initially, structures of both enzymes were compared via protein-protein superimposition in 3D-space and the location of the lid region of T1 lipase was highlighted. A total of three variants of T1 lipase without lid were successfully designed by referring to BSLA lipase (a lipase without lid). The ability of T1 lipase without lid variants in degrading P(3HB) was investigated quantitatively. All the variants showed activity towards the substrate which confirmed that T1 lipase without lid is indeed able to degrade P(3HB). In addition, D2 was recorded to have the highest activity amongst other variants. Results obtained in this study highlighted the fact that native T1 lipase is a versatile hydrolase enzyme which does not only record triglyceride degradation but also P(3HB) by simply removing the lid region.
The periplasmic proteome of recombinant E. coli cells expressing human interferon-α2b (INF-α2b) was analysed by 2D-gel electrophoresis to find the most altered proteins. Of some unique up- and down-regulated proteins in the proteome, ten were identified by MS. The majority of the proteins belonged to the ABC transporter protein family. Other affected proteins were ones involved in the regulation of transcription such as DNA-binding response regulator, stress-related proteins and ecotin. Thus, the production of INF-α2b acts as a stress on the cells and results in the induction of various transporters and stress related proteins.
The xylanase gene from Bacillus pumilus PJ19 amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was cloned into pCRII vector and transformed into Escherichia coli strain INValphaF'. Starting from an ATG as an initiator codon, an open reading frame coding for 202 amino acids was obtained. The recombinant xylanase sequence showed a 96% homology with the xylanase sequence from B. pumilus IPO strain and had an estimated molecular weight of 22,474. Xylanase activity expressed by E. coli INValphaF' harboring the cloned gene was located primarily in the cytoplasmic fraction.
Carboxylic acid reductases (CARs) are attracting burgeoning attention as biocatalysts for organic synthesis of aldehydes and their follow-up products from economic carboxylic acid precursors. The CAR enzyme class as a whole, however, is still poorly understood. To date, relatively few CAR sequences have been reported, especially from fungal sources. Here, we sought to increase the diversity of the CAR enzyme class. Six new CAR sequences from the white-rot fungus Pycnoporus cinnabarinus were identified from genome-wide mining. Genome and gene clustering analysis suggests that these PcCAR enzymes play different natural roles in Basidiomycete systems, compared to their type II Ascomycete counterparts. The cDNA sequences of all six Pccar genes were deduced and analysis of their corresponding amino acid sequence showed that they encode for proteins of similar properties that possess a conserved modular functional tri-domain arrangement. Phylogenetic analyses showed that all PcCAR enzymes cluster together with the other type IV CARs. One candidate, PcCAR4, was cloned and over-expressed recombinantly in Escherichia coli. Subsequent biotransformation-based screening with a panel of structurally-diverse carboxylic acid substrates suggest that PcCAR4 possessed a more pronounced substrate specificity compared to previously reported CARs, preferring to reduce sterically-rigid carboxylic acids such as benzoic acid. These findings thus present a new functionally-distinct member of the CAR enzyme class.
Fuculose-1-phosphate aldolase (FucA) catalyses the reversible cleavage of L-fuculose 1-phosphate to dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP) and L-lactaldehyde. This enzyme from mesophiles and thermophiles has been extensively studied; however, there is no report on this enzyme from a psychrophile. In this study, the gene encoding FucA from Glaciozyma antarctica PI12 (GaFucA) was cloned and the enzyme was overexpressed in Escherichia coli, purified and crystallized. The tetrameric structure of GaFucA was determined to 1.34 Å resolution. The overall architecture of GaFucA and its catalytically essential histidine triad are highly conserved among other fuculose aldolases. Comparisons of structural features between GaFucA and its mesophilic and thermophilic homologues revealed that the enzyme has typical psychrophilic attributes, indicated by the presence of a high number of nonpolar residues at the surface and a lower number of arginine residues.
Cutinase catalyzes the hydrolysis of water-soluble esters and long-chain triglycerides and belongs to the family of serine hydrolases. The enzyme is thought to represent an evolutionary link between the esterase and lipase families and has potential applications in a wide range of industrial hydrolytic processes, for which an understanding of the molecular basis of its substrate specificity is critical. Glomerella cingulata cutinase has been cloned and the protein has been overexpressed in Escherichia coli, purified and subsequently crystallized in a wide range of different crystal forms in the presence and absence of inhibitors. The best crystals are those of the apo cutinase, which diffract to beyond 1.6 A resolution and belong to space group P4(1)2(1)2 or P4(3)2(1)2. Crystals of cutinase with the inhibitors PETFP or E600 belong to space groups P2(1)2(1)2(1) and P2(1), respectively, and diffract to approximately 2.5 A resolution. All of the crystals are suitable for structural studies, which are currently ongoing.
A novel electrochemical DNA biosensor for ultrasensitive and selective quantitation of Escherichia coli DNA based on aminated hollow silica spheres (HSiSs) has been successfully developed. The HSiSs were synthesized with facile sonication and heating techniques. The HSiSs have an inner and an outer surface for DNA immobilization sites after they have been functionalized with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane. From field emission scanning electron microscopy images, the presence of pores was confirmed in the functionalized HSiSs. Furthermore, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis indicated that the HSiSs have four times more surface area than silica spheres that have no pores. These aminated HSiSs were deposited onto a screen-printed carbon paste electrode containing a layer of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to form a AuNP/HSiS hybrid sensor membrane matrix. Aminated DNA probes were grafted onto the AuNP/HSiS-modified screen-printed electrode via imine covalent bonds with use of glutaraldehyde cross-linker. The DNA hybridization reaction was studied by differential pulse voltammetry using an anthraquinone redox intercalator as the electroactive DNA hybridization label. The DNA biosensor demonstrated a linear response over a wide target sequence concentration range of 1.0×10-12-1.0×10-2 μM, with a low detection limit of 8.17×10-14 μM (R2 = 0.99). The improved performance of the DNA biosensor appeared to be due to the hollow structure and rough surface morphology of the hollow silica particles, which greatly increased the total binding surface area for high DNA loading capacity. The HSiSs also facilitated molecule diffusion through the silica hollow structure, and substantially improved the overall DNA hybridization assay. Graphical abstract Step-by-step DNA biosensor fabrication based on aminated hollow silica spheres.
In view of the epidemiological success of CTX-M-15-producing lineages of Escherichia coli and particularly of sequence type 131 (ST131), it is of significant interest to explore its prevalence in countries such as India and to determine if antibiotic resistance, virulence, metabolic potential, and/or the genetic architecture of the ST131 isolates differ from those of non-ST131 isolates. A collection of 126 E. coli isolates comprising 43 ST131 E. coli, 40 non-ST131 E. coli, and 43 fecal E. coli isolates collected from a tertiary care hospital in India was analyzed. These isolates were subjected to enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC)-based fingerprinting, O typing, phylogenetic grouping, antibiotic sensitivity testing, and virulence and antimicrobial resistance gene (VAG) detection. Representative isolates from this collection were also analyzed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), conjugation, metabolic profiling, biofilm production assay, and zebra fish lethality assay. All of the 43 ST131 E. coli isolates were exclusively associated with phylogenetic group B2 (100%), while most of the clinical non-ST131 and stool non-ST131 E. coli isolates were affiliated with the B2 (38%) and A (58%) phylogenetic groups, respectively. Significantly greater proportions of ST131 isolates (58%) than non-ST131 isolates (clinical and stool E. coli isolates, 5% each) were technically identified to be extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC). The clinical ST131, clinical non-ST131, and stool non-ST131 E. coli isolates exhibited high rates of multidrug resistance (95%, 91%, and 91%, respectively), extended-spectrum-β-lactamase (ESBL) production (86%, 83%, and 91%, respectively), and metallo-β-lactamase (MBL) production (28%, 33%, and 0%, respectively). CTX-M-15 was strongly linked with ESBL production in ST131 isolates (93%), whereas CTX-M-15 plus TEM were present in clinical and stool non-ST131 E. coli isolates. Using MLST, we confirmed the presence of two NDM-1-positive ST131 E. coli isolates. The aggregate bioscores (metabolite utilization) for ST131, clinical non-ST131, and stool non-ST131 E. coli isolates were 53%, 52%, and 49%, respectively. The ST131 isolates were moderate biofilm producers and were more highly virulent in zebra fish than non-ST131 isolates. According to ERIC-based fingerprinting, the ST131 strains were more genetically similar, and this was subsequently followed by the genetic similarity of clinical non-ST131 and stool non-ST131 E. coli strains. In conclusion, our data provide novel insights into aspects of the fitness advantage of E. coli lineage ST131 and suggest that a number of factors are likely involved in the worldwide dissemination of and infections due to ST131 E. coli isolates.
Lipolytic enzymes with cold adaptation are gaining increasing interest due to their biotechnological prospective. Previously, a cold adapted family I.3 lipase (AMS8 lipase) was isolated from an Antarctic Pseudomonas. AMS8 lipase was largely expressed in insoluble form. The refolded His-tagged recombinant AMS8 lipase was purified with 23.0% total recovery and purification factor of 9.7. The purified AMS8 lipase migrated as a single band with a molecular weight approximately 65kDa via electrophoresis. AMS8 lipase was highly active at 30°C at pH 10. The half-life of AMS8 lipase was reported at 4 and 2h under the incubation of 30 and 40°C, respectively. The lipase was stable over a broad range of pH. It showed enhancement effect in its relative activity under the presence of Li(+), Na(+), K(+), Rb(+) and Cs(+) after 30min treatment. Heavy metal ions such as Cu(2+), Fe(3+) and Zn(2+) inhibited AMS8 activity. This cold adapted alkalophilic AMS lipase was also active in various organic solvent of different polarity. These unique properties of this biological macromolecule will provide considerable potential for many biotechnological applications and organic synthesis at low temperature.
Relative ease in handling and manipulation of Escherichia coli strains make them primary candidate to express proteins heterologously. Overexpression of heterologous genes that contain codons infrequently used by E. coli is related with difficulties such as mRNA instability, early termination of transcription and/or translation, deletions and/or misincorporation, and cell growth inhibition. These codon bias -associated problems are addressed by co-expressing ColE1-compatible, rare tRNA expressing helper plasmids. However, this approach has inadequacies, which we have addressed by engineering an expression vector that concomitantly expresses the heterologous protein of interest, and rare tRNA genes in E. coli. The expression vector contains three (argU, ileY, leuW) rare tRNA genes and a useful multiple cloning site for easy in-frame cloning. To maintain the overall size of the parental plasmid vector, the rare tRNA genes replaced the non-essential DNA segments in the vector. The cloned gene is expressed under the control of T7 promoter and resulting recombinant protein has a C-terminal 6His tag for IMAC-mediated purification. We have evaluated the usefulness of this expression vector by expressing three HIV-1 genes namely HIV-1 p27 (nef), HIV-1 p24 (ca), and HIV-1 vif in NiCo21(DE3) E.coli and demonstrated the advantages of using expression vector that concomitantly expresses rare tRNA and heterologous genes.
HIV genome is packaged and organized in a conical capsid, which is made up of ~1,500 copies of the viral capsid protein p24 (CA). Being a primary structural component and due to its critical roles in both late and early stages of the HIV replication cycle, CA has attracted increased interest as a drug discovery target in recent years. Drug discovery studies require large amounts of highly pure and biologically active protein. It is therefore desirable to establish a simple and reproducible process for efficient production of HIV-1 CA.
BACKGROUND: Demand for high-throughput bioprocessing has dramatically increased especially in the biopharmaceutical industry because the technologies are of vital importance to process optimization and media development. This can be efficiently boosted by using microtiter plate (MTP) cultivation setup embedded into an automated liquid-handling system. The objective of this study was to establish an automated microscale method for upstream and downstream bioprocessing of α-IFN2b production by recombinant Escherichia coli. The extraction performance of α-IFN2b by osmotic shock using two different systems, automated microscale platform and manual extraction in MTP was compared.
RESULTS: The amount of α-IFN2b extracted using automated microscale platform (49.2 μg/L) was comparable to manual osmotic shock method (48.8 μg/L), but the standard deviation was 2 times lower as compared to manual osmotic shock method. Fermentation parameters in MTP involving inoculum size, agitation speed, working volume and induction profiling revealed that the fermentation conditions for the highest production of α-IFN2b (85.5 μg/L) was attained at inoculum size of 8%, working volume of 40% and agitation speed of 1000 rpm with induction at 4 h after the inoculation.
CONCLUSION: Although the findings at MTP scale did not show perfect scalable results as compared to shake flask culture, but microscale technique development would serve as a convenient and low-cost solution in process optimization for recombinant protein.
Our newly discovered metalloprotease, designated as ALP NS12 was selected using gelatin agar plates with incubation at 100 °C. Subcloning of the fragments in to pUC118 to make E. coli HB101 (pPEMP01NS) with following two-step chromatography using diethylaminoethyl sepharose (DEAE-sepharose) and Sephadex G-100 columns to purify 97-kDa expressed enzyme was performed. Although activity of immobilized ALP NS12 on glass surface was established at temperatures between 70 and 120 °C and pH ranges 4.0-13.0, the optimum temperature and pH were achieved at 100 °C and 11.0, respectively. Enhancement of enzyme activity was obtained in the presence of 5 mM MnCl2 (91 %), CaCl2 (357 %), FeCl2 (175 %), MgCl2 (94 %), ZnCl2 (412 %), NiCl (86 %), NaCl (239 %), and Na-sulfate (81 %) while inhibition was observed with EDTA (5 mM), PMSF (3 mM), urea (8 M), and SDS (1 %) at 65, 37, 33, and 42 %, respectively. Consequently, the enzyme was well analyzed using crystallography and protein modeling. ALP NS12 can be applied in industrial processes at extreme temperatures and under highly basic conditions, chelators, and detergents.
Reporter gene activity under the regulation of the oil palm metallothionein-like gene, MT3-A promoter was assessed in prokaryotes. Vector constructs containing MT3-A promoter with (W1MT3-A) and without (W2MT3-A) five prime untranslated region (5'-UTR) fused to ß-glucuronidase (GUS) gene in pCAMBIA 1304 vector were produced. 5'-rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) using mRNA isolated from Escherichia coli and Agrobacterium tumefaciens harboring W1MT3-A confirmed that fusion transcripts of MT3-A 5'-UTR-GUS were successfully produced in both bacteria. Competitive PCR and GUS fluorometric assay showed changes in the level of GUS gene transcripts and enzyme activity in response to increasing concentrations of Cu²+ and Zn²+. The application of Cu²+ increased GUS activity and GUS mRNA level in both bacteria. In E. coli, a high level of GUS activity driven by W1MT3-A and W2MT3-A was observed in treatment with 25 μM Cu²+ resulting in an increase in the GUS mRNA level to 7.2 and 7.5 x 10⁻⁴ pmol/μl respectively, compared to the control (5.1 x 10⁻⁴ pmol/μl). The lowest GUS activity and GUS mRNA level were obtained for W1MT3-A and W2MT3-A in the presence of 100 μM Cu²+ in both bacteria compared to the control (without Cu²+). The application of different Zn²+ concentrations resulted in a strong decrease in the GUS activity and GUS mRNA level in E. coli and A. tumefaciens. These findings showed that the oil palm MT3-A promoter is functional in prokaryotes and produced detectable GUS transcripts and enzyme activities. This promoter may potentially be used in prokaryotic systems which require metal inducible gene expression.
Maintenance of recombinant plasmid vectors in host bacteria relies on the presence of selection antibiotics in the growth media to suppress plasmid -free segregants. However, presence of antibiotic resistance genes and antibiotics themselves is not acceptable in several applications of biotechnology. Previously, we have shown that FabV-Triclosan selection system can be used to select high and medium copy number plasmid vectors in E. coli. Here, we have extended our previous work and demonstrated that expression vectors containing FabV can be used efficiently to express heterologous recombinant proteins in similar or better amounts in E. coli host when compared with expression vectors containing β-lactamase. Use of small amount of non-antibiotic Triclosan as selection agent in growth medium, enhanced plasmid stability, applicability in various culture media, and compatibility with other selection systems for multiple plasmid maintenance are noteworthy features of FabV-Triclosan selection system.
Flavonoids are secondary metabolites synthesized by plants shown to exhibit health benefits such as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-tumor effects. Thus, due to the importance of this compound, several enzymes involved in the flavonoid pathway have been cloned and characterized in Escherichia coli. However, the formation of inclusion bodies has become a major disadvantage of this approach. As an alternative, chalcone synthase from Physcomitrella patens was secreted into the medium using a bacteriocin release protein expression vector. Secretion of P. patens chalcone synthase into the culture media was achieved by co-expression with a psW1 plasmid encoding bacteriocin release protein in E. coli Tuner (DE3) plysS. The optimized conditions, which include the incubation of cells for 20 h with 40 ng/ml mitomycin C at OD(600) induction time of 0.5 was found to be the best condition for chalcone synthase secretion.
Thermostable and organic solvent-tolerant enzymes have significant potential in a wide range of synthetic reactions in industry due to their inherent stability at high temperatures and their ability to endure harsh organic solvents. In this study, a novel gene encoding a true lipase was isolated by construction of a genomic DNA library of thermophilic Aneurinibacillus thermoaerophilus strain HZ into Escherichia coli plasmid vector. Sequence analysis revealed that HZ lipase had 62% identity to putative lipase from Bacillus pseudomycoides. The closely characterized lipases to the HZ lipase gene are from thermostable Bacillus and Geobacillus lipases belonging to the subfamily I.5 with ≤ 57% identity. The amino acid sequence analysis of HZ lipase determined a conserved pentapeptide containing the active serine, GHSMG and a Ca(2+)-binding motif, GCYGSD in the enzyme. Protein structure modeling showed that HZ lipase consisted of an α/β hydrolase fold and a lid domain. Protein sequence alignment, conserved regions analysis, clustal distance matrix and amino acid composition illustrated differences between HZ lipase and other thermostable lipases. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that this lipase represented a new subfamily of family I of bacterial true lipases, classified as family I.9. The HZ lipase was expressed under promoter Plac using IPTG and was characterized. The recombinant enzyme showed optimal activity at 65 °C and retained ≥ 97% activity after incubation at 50 °C for 1h. The HZ lipase was stable in various polar and non-polar organic solvents.
A new strain of psychrophilic bacteria (designated strain AMS8) from Antarctic soil was screened for extracellular lipolytic activity and further analyzed using molecular approach. Analysis of 16S rDNA showed that strain AMS8 was similar to Pseudomonas sp. A lipase gene named lipAMS8 was successfully isolated from strain AMS8, cloned, sequenced and overexpressed in Escherichia coli. Sequence analysis revealed that lipAMS8 consist of 1,431 bp nucleotides that encoded a polypeptide consisting of 476 amino acids. It lacked an N-terminal signal peptide and contained a glycine- and aspartate-rich nonapeptide sequence at the C-terminus, which are known to be the characteristics of repeats-in-toxin bacterial lipases. Furthermore, the substrate binding site of lipAMS8 was identified as S(207), D(255) and H(313), based on homology modeling and multiple sequence alignment. Crude lipase exhibited maximum activity at 20 °C and retained almost 50 % of its activity at 10 °C. The molecular weight of lipAMS8 was estimated to be 50 kDa via sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). The optimal expression level was attained using the recombinant plasmid pET32b/BL21(DE3) expressed at 15 °C for 8 h, induced by 0.1 mM isopropyl β-D thiogalactoside (IPTG) at E. coli growth optimal density of 0.5.