Enhancement of the production of soluble recombinant penicillin acylase in Escherichia coli via coexpression of a periplasmic protease/chaperone, DegP, was demonstrated. Coexpression of DegP resulted in a shift of in vivo penicillin acylase (PAC) synthesis flux from the nonproductive pathway to the productive one when pac was overexpressed. The number of inclusion bodies, which consist primarily of protein aggregates of PAC precursors in the periplasm, was highly reduced, and the specific PAC activity was highly increased. DegP was a heat shock protein induced in response to pac overexpression, suggesting that the protein could possibly suppress the physiological toxicity caused by pac overexpression. Coexpression of DegP S210A , a DegP mutant without protease activity but retaining chaperone activity, could not suppress the physiological toxicity, suggesting that DegP protease activity was primarily responsible for the suppression, possibly by degradation of abnormal proteins when pac was overexpressed. However, a shortage of periplasmic protease activity was not the only reason for the deterioration in culture performance upon pac overexpression because coexpression of a DegP-homologous periplasmic protease, DegQ or DegS, could not suppress the physiological toxicity. The chaperone activity of DegP is proposed to be another possible factor contributing to the suppression.The well-known genetic information of Escherichia coli and successful applications of recombinant DNA technology make it possible for a variety of attempts with genetic engineering techniques to overproduce recombinant proteins. Upon performing the cultivation for recombinant protein production, there are two primary goals: high-cell-density cultivation and high-level gene expression. Culture performance can be optimized when the two goals are achieved simultaneously. Highcell-density culture can be obtained by fed-batch cultivation (48), in which concentrated medium is fed gradually into the bioreactor. The primary concern of this operation is developing an optimum feeding strategy, based on which cells can be maintained in a high-energy state for enhancing gene expression while cells are growing.

Expression of the leaderless pac gene (LL pac), which lacks the coding region for the signal peptide of penicillin acylase (PAC), in Escherichia coli was conducted. It was demonstrated that the PAC precursor, proPAC, can be produced and even processed to form mature PAC in the cytoplasm, indicating that the posttranslational processing steps for PAC maturation can occur in both the periplasm and the cytoplasm of E. coli. The outcome of proPAC folding and PAC maturation could be affected by several factors, such as inducer type, proPAC formation rate, and chaperone availability. Misfolding of proPAC in the cytoplasm could be partially resolved through the coexpression of cytoplasmic chaperones, such as trigger factor, GroEL/ES, or DnaK/J-GrpE. The three chaperones tested showed different extents of the effect on proPAC solublization and PAC maturation, and trigger factor had the most prominent one. However, the chaperone-mediated solublization of proPAC did not guarantee its maturation, which is usually limited by the first autoproteolytic step. It was observed that arabinose could act as an effective inducer for the induction of LL pac expression regulated by the lac-derived promoter system of trc. In addition, PAC maturation could be highly facilitated by arabinose supplementation and coexpression of trigger factor, suggesting that the coordination of chaperone systems with proper culture conditions could dramatically impact recombinant protein production. This study suggests that folding/misfolding of proPAC could be a major step limiting the overproduction of PAC in E. coli and that the problem could be resolved through the search for appropriate chaperones for coexpression. It also demonstrates the analogy in the issues of proPAC misfolding as well as the expression bottleneck occurring in the cytoplasm (i.e., LL pac expression) and those occurring in the periplasm (i.e., wild-type pac expression).

The pac gene encoding penicillin acylase (PAC) was overexpressed under the regulation of the T7 promoter in Escherichia coli. PAC, with its complex formation mechanism, serves as a unique target protein for demonstration of several key strategies for enhancing recombinant protein production. The current T7 system for pac overexpression was fraught with various technical hurdles. Upon the induction with a conventional inducer of isopropyl-beta-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG), the production of PAC was limited by the accumulation of PAC precursors (proPAC) as inclusion bodies and various negative cellular responses such as growth inhibition and cell lysis. The expression performance could be improved by the coexpression of degP encoding a periplasmic protein with protease and chaperone activities. In addition to IPTG, arabinose was shown to be another effective inducer. Interestingly, arabinose not only induced the current T7 promoter system for pac expression but also facilitated the posttranslational processing of proPAC for maturation, resulting in significant enhancement for the production of PAC. Glycerol appeared to have an effect similar to, but not as significant as, arabinose for enhancing the production of PAC. The study highlights the importance of developing suitable genetically engineered strains with culture conditions for enhancing recombinant protein production in E. coli.