No abstract

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).

Product inhibition is a frequent bottleneck in industrial enzymes, and testing mutations to alleviate product inhibition via traditional methods remains challenging as many variants need to be tested against multiple substrate and product concentrations. Further, traditional screening methods are conducted in vitro, and resulting enzyme variants may perform differently in vivo in the context of whole-cell metabolism and regulation. In this study, we address these two problems by establishing a high-throughput screening method to alleviate product inhibition in an industrially relevant enzyme, chorismate pyruvate-lyase (UbiC). First, we engineered a highly specific, genetically encoded biosensor for 4-hydroxybenzoate (4HB) in an industrially relevant host, Pseudomonas putida KT2440. We subsequently applied the biosensor to detect the activity of a heterologously expressed UbiC that converts chorismate into 4HB and pyruvate. By using benzoate as a product surrogate that inhibits UbiC without activating the biosensor, we were able to efficiently create and screen a diversified library for UbiC variants with reduced product inhibition. Introduction of the improved UbiC enzyme variant into an experimental production strain for the industrial precursor cis,cis-muconic acid (muconate), enabled a >2-fold yield improvement for glucose to muconate conversion when the new UbiC variant was expressed from a plasmid and a 60% yield increase when the same UbiC variant was genomically integrated into the strain. Overall, this work demonstrates that by coupling a library of enzyme variants to whole-cell catalysis and biosensing, variants with reduced product inhibition can be identified, and that this improved enzyme can result in increased titers of a downstream molecule of interest.

Functional expression of recombinant Pseudozyma antarctica lipase B (PalB) in Escherichia coli has been technically problematic due to protein misfolding, ineffective disulfide bond formation, and protein instability associated with intracellular proteolysis. To overcome these problems, an alternative approach was explored in this study by extracellular secretion of PalB via two Sec-independent secretion systems, i.e., the alpha-hemolysin (type I) and the modified flagellar (type III) secretion systems, which can export proteins of interest from the cytoplasm directly to the exterior of the cell. Both shaker flask and bioreactor cultivations were performed to characterize the developed PalB expression/secretion systems. Bioactive PalB was expressed and secreted extracellularly either as a HlyA fusion (i.e., PalB-HlyA via type I system) or an intact protein (via type III system). However, the secretion intermediates in the intracellular fraction of culture samples were non-bioactive even though they were soluble, suggesting that the extracellular secretion did mediate the development of PalB activity. Also importantly, the secretion strategy appeared to have a minimum impact on cell physiology. PalB secretion via the type I system was fast with higher specific PalB activities but poor cell growth. On the other hand, the secretion via the type III system was slow with lower specific PalB activities but effective cell growth.

Arabinose was shown to serve as an effective inducer for induction of the lac-derived promoters in Escherichia coli using penicillin acylase (PAC) as a model protein. Upon the induction with a conventional inducer, isopropyl-beta-d-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG), for pac overexpression, which is regulated by the trc or (DE3)/T7 promoter, the production of PAC was limited by the accumulation of PAC precursors (proPAC) as inclusion bodies. Negative cellular responses, such as growth inhibition and cell lysis, were frequently observed, resulting in a low pac expression level and poor culture performance. Interestingly, these technical hurdles can be overcome simply through the use of arabinose as an inducer. The results indicate that arabinose not only induced the lac-derived promoter systems (i.e., trc and (DE3)/T7) for pac (or LL pac) overexpression but also facilitated the posttranslational processing of proPAC for maturation. However, the arabinose-inducibility appears to be host-dependent and becomes less observable in the strains with a mutation in the ara operon. The arabinose-inducibility was also investigated in the expression system with the coexistence of the trc promoter system regulating pac expression and another arabinose-inducible promoter system of araB regulating degP coexpression.