Molecular and Genetic Strategies to Enhance Functional Expression of Recombinant Protein in Escherichia coli

The versatile Escherichia coli facilitates protein expression with relative simplicity, high cell density on inexpensive substrates, well known genetics, variety of expression vectors, mutant strains, co-overexpression technology, extracytoplasmic secretion systems, and recombinant protein fusion pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Narayanan, Niju
Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
Language:English
Published: University of Waterloo 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10012/4721
Description
Summary:The versatile Escherichia coli facilitates protein expression with relative simplicity, high cell density on inexpensive substrates, well known genetics, variety of expression vectors, mutant strains, co-overexpression technology, extracytoplasmic secretion systems, and recombinant protein fusion partners. Although, the protocol is rather simple for soluble proteins, heterologous protein expression is frequently encountered by major technical limitations including inefficient translation, formation of insoluble inclusion bodies, lack of posttranslational modification mechanisms, degradation by host proteases, and impaired cell physiology due to host/protein toxicity, in achieving functional expression of stable, soluble, and bioactive protein. In this thesis, model protein expression systems are used to address the technical issues for enhancing recombinant protein expression in E. coli. When yellow fluorescence protein (YFP) was displayed on E. coli cell surface, the integrity of the cell envelope was compromised and cell physiology was severely impaired, resulting in poor display performance, which was restored by the coexpression of Skp, a periplasmic chaperone. On the basis of monitoring the promoter activities of degP, rpoH, and cpxP under various culture conditions, it was demonstrated that the cell-surface display induced the σE extracytoplasmic stress response, and PdegP::lacZ was proposed to be a suitable “sensor” for monitoring extracytoplasmic stress. Intracellular proteolysis has been recognized as one of the key factors limiting recombinant protein production, particularly for eukaryotic proteins heterologously expressed in the prokaryotic expression systems of E. coli. Two amino acids, Leu149 and Val223, were identified as proteolytically sensitive when Pseudozyma antarctica lipase (PalB) was heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli. The functional expression was enhanced using the double mutant for cultivation. However, the recombinant protein production was still limited by PalB misfolding, ...