Genetic optimizations to achieve high-level production of three different proteins of medical importance for humans, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interferon alpha 2b (IFN-␣2b), and single-chain antibody variable fragment (scFv-phOx), were investigated during high-cell-density cultivations of Escherichia coli. All three proteins were poorly expressed when put under control of the strong Pm/xylS promoter/regulator system, but high volumetric yields of GM-CSF and scFv-phOx (up to 1.7 and 2.3 g/liter, respectively) were achieved when the respective genes were fused to a translocation signal sequence. The choice of signal sequence, pelB, ompA, or synthetic signal sequence CSP, displayed a high and specific impact on the total expression levels for these two proteins. Data obtained by quantitative PCR confirmed relatively high in vivo transcript levels without using a fused signal sequence, suggesting that the signal sequences mainly stimulate translation. IFN-␣2b expression remained poor even when fused to a signal sequence, and an alternative IFN-␣2b coding sequence that was optimized for effective expression in Escherichia coli was therefore synthesized. The total expression level of this optimized gene remained low, while high-level production (0.6 g/liter) was achieved when the gene was fused to a signal sequence. Together, our results demonstrate a critical role of signal sequences for achieving industrial level expression of three human proteins in E. coli under the conditions tested, and this effect has to our knowledge not previously been systematically investigated.

Methods for transfer of exogenous DNA into cells are essential for genetics and molecular biology, and the lack of effective methods hampers research on many different species of bacteria which have shown to be particularly recalcitrant to transformation. This review presents the progress on the development of methods for artificial transformation of bacteria with emphasis on different methodologies and the range of bacteria that can be transformed. The methods' strengths and weaknesses are described.

In industrial scale recombinant protein production it is often of interest to be able to translocate the product to reduce downstream costs, and heterologous proteins may require the oxidative environment outside of the cytoplasm for correct folding. High-level expression combined with translocation to the periplasm is often toxic to the host, and expression systems that can be used to fine-tune the production levels are therefore important. We previously constructed vector pJB658, which harbors the broad-host-range RK2 minireplicon and the inducible Pm/xylS promoter system, and we here explore the potential of this unique system to manipulate the expression and translocation of a host-toxic single-chain antibody variable fragment with affinity for hapten 2-phenyloxazol-5-one (phOx) (scFv-phOx). Fine-tuning of scFv-phOx levels was achieved by varying the concentrations of inducers and the vector copy number and also different signal sequences. Our data show that periplasmic accumulation of scFv-phOx leads to cell lysis, and we demonstrate the importance of controlled and high expression rates to achieve high product yields. By optimizing such parameters we show that soluble scFv-phOx could be produced to a high volumetric yield (1.2 g/liter) in high-cell-density cultures of Escherichia coli.The application range of antibodies in medicine and biotechnology is broad, and there has been great progress in the design and selection of new variants with novel affinities. In particular, there has been a growing interest in the development of antibody fragments comprising the V H and V L domains connected to each other as a single chain (scFv) (4). The small size of scFv proteins (about 250 amino acids) compared to native antibodies confers certain therapeutic advantages because of their shorter half-life (rapid blood clearance) and faster tissue penetration. scFv molecules can be used as selective carriers for delivering radionucleids, toxins, or cytotoxic drugs to malignant cell populations, as well as providing valuable tools for studying antibody-antigen interactions in detail (14). In addition, this feature makes it possible to construct and screen large scFv libraries by using phage display approaches (for a review, see reference 23).For medical applications scFvs are needed in large amounts, and the ability to produce high yields in Escherichia coli has gained considerable interest (14). Native scFv proteins have two disulfide bonds and require oxidative conditions to fold correctly. Although expression of native scFv proteins without disulfide bridge formation has been reported (9), cytoplasmic production in bacteria typically results in aggregation of scFv polypeptides into insoluble inclusion bodies (14). Therefore, in E. coli it is usually desirable to express scFvs as fusion proteins targeted for translocation to the oxidative periplasm to obtain functional products (3,26). Various vector systems for recombinant scFv expression in E. coli have been reported (11,15,19), but the experiments were typically perfo...

The inducible Pm-xylS promoter system has proven useful for production of recombinant proteins in several gram-negative species and in high-cell-density cultivations of Escherichia coli. In this study we subjected a 24-bp region of Pm (including the ؊10 element) to random mutagenesis, leading to large mutant libraries in E. coli. Low-frequency-occurring Pm mutants displaying strongly increased promoter activity (up-mutants) could be efficiently identified by using ␤-lactamase as a reporter. The up-mutants typically carried multiple point mutations positioned throughout the mutagenized region, combined with deletions around the transcription start site. Mutants displaying up to about a 14-fold increase in ␤-lactamase expression (relative to wild-type Pm) were identified without loss of the inducible phenotype. The mutants also strongly stimulated the expression of two other reporter genes, luc (encoding firefly luciferase) and celB (encoding phosphoglucomutase), and were found to significantly improve (twofold) a previously optimized process for high-level recombinant production of the medically important granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor in E. coli under high-cell-density conditions. These results demonstrate the potential of using random mutagenesis of promoters to improve protein expression at industrial levels and indicate that targeted modifications of individual functional elements are not sufficient to obtain optimized promoter sequences.The Pm-xylS promoter system drives the expression of the meta-cleavage operon carried by the Pseudomonas putida TOL plasmid pWW0. The gene products of this operon are involved in the catabolism of alkylbenzoates and are expressed in response to meta-pathway substrates (25). XylS positively regulates Pm when forming an activated complex with effectors like benzoate or its derivatives (13,26). Transcriptional activation occurs through binding of the activated XylS to two direct imperfect repeats located directly upstream of the Ϫ35 region of Pm (12).Pm-xylS has been shown to be useful for high-level expression of recombinant proteins in a wide range of gram-negative bacterial species (3,4,20,24). The uninduced expression level is low, and the use of different effector compounds at various concentrations can be used to regulate the level of induced expression (35). Many of the inducers are low-cost compounds that enter the cell by passive diffusion. Previously, we reported the use of this system in the construction of broad-host-range expression vectors based on the RK2 minimal replicon (2, 3). One of these vectors, pJB658, has proven useful for tightly regulated recombinant-gene expression in several gram-negative species (2,3,5,31,35). Industrial levels of production of human proteins under high-cell-density conditions (HCDC) of Escherichia coli has also been demonstrated with the Pm-xylS system coupled to the RK2 replicon (30,31). By studying the functionality of different secretion signal sequences, the effects of various vector copy numbers, and the condit...

SummaryThe inducible Pm promoter together with its cognate positive transcription regulator XylS has been shown to be useful for recombinant protein production under high cell density conditions. Here we report directed evolution of XylS resulting in mutant proteins with increased ability to stimulate transcription in Escherichia coli from Pm. A first round of mutagenesis using error‐prone PCR on xylS was used to construct a library consisting of about 430 000 clones, and this library could be efficiently screened with respect to stimulation of expression from Pm due to a positive correlation between the level of expression of the reporter gene, bla (encoding β‐lactamase), and the ampicillin tolerance of the corresponding host cells. Fourteen different amino acid substitutions in XylS were found to separately lead to up to nearly a threefold stimulation of expression under induced conditions, relative to wild type. These mutations were all located in the part corresponding to the N‐terminal half of the protein. Varying combinations of the mutations resulted in further stimulation, and the best results (about 10‐fold stimulation under induced conditions) were obtained by using a random shuffling procedure followed by a new round of screening. The uninduced levels of expression for the same mutants also increased, but only about four times. Through in silico 3D modelling of the N‐terminal domain of XylS, it was observed that the evolved mutant proteins contained substitutions that were positioned in different parts of the predicted structure, including a β‐barrel putatively responsible for effector binding and a coiled coil probably important for dimerization. The total production of the host‐toxic antibody fragment scFv‐phOx expressed from Pm with the evolved XylS mutant protein StEP‐13 was about ninefold higher than with wild‐type XylS, demonstrating that directed evolution of transcription factors can be an important new tool to achieve high‐level recombinant protein production.

The inducible Pm promoter integrated into broad-host-range plasmid RK2 replicons can be fine-tuned continuously between the uninduced and maximally induced levels by varying the inducer concentrations. To lower the uninduced background level while still maintaining the inducibility for applications in, for example, metabolic engineering and synthetic (systems) biology, we report here the use of mutations in the Pm DNA region corresponding to the 5 untranslated region of mRNA (UTR). Five UTR variants obtained by doped oligonucleotide mutagenesis and selection, apparently reducing the efficiency of translation, were all found to display strongly reduced uninduced expression of three different reporter genes (encoding ␤-lactamase, luciferase, and phosphoglucomutase) in Escherichia coli. The ratio between induced and uninduced expression remained the same or higher compared to cells containing a corresponding plasmid with the wild-type UTR. Interestingly, the UTR variants also displayed similar effects on expression when substituted for the native UTR in another and constitutive promoter, P1 (P antitet ), indicating a broad application potential of these UTR variants. Two of the selected variants were used to control the production of the C 50 carotenoid sarcinaxanthin in an engineered strain of E. coli that produces the precursor lycopene. Sarcinaxanthin is produced in this particular strain by expressing three Micrococcus luteus derived genes from the promoter Pm. The results indicated that UTR variants can be used to eliminate sarcinaxanthin production under uninduced conditions, whereas cells containing the corresponding plasmid with a wild-type UTR produced ca. 25% of the level observed under induced conditions.The initially used methods of deleting or overexpressing genes have been demonstrated to be inadequate for many applications in metabolic engineering (21,31,32). For example, when the goal is to optimize the expression level of a desired protein by engineering the relevant metabolic pathway, it might be necessary to change the expression of multiple enzymes simultaneously and to different levels (30,38). Also, reducing the formation of particular by-products can increase the flux of the desired product (29). In addition, low basal expression is critical for applications such as the expression of toxic genes, metabolic engineering, and control analysis (2, 14, 27, 34). This has led to an increased focus on development of genetic tools to fine-tune gene expression to the desired levels. A commonly used strategy is to make so-called promoter libraries of constitutive promoters (1,15,17). Such promoters seem to be preferred over the corresponding inducible ones for industrial scale productions because of factors such as inducer costs, sensitivity to inducer concentration, and heterogeneity of expression caused by an all-or-none effect of induction (1,19). However, the all-or-none induction effect may be eliminated if the inducer enters the cell interior by passive diffusion (20). Thus, regulatable promoter s...

Methodologies for introduction of DNA into cells are essential in molecular genetics and vital for applications such as genetic engineering and gene therapy. The use of cyclodextrins (CyDs) for increased efficiency of introducing DNA into eukaryotic cells (transfection) has been reported, but CyDs' effect on the introduction of DNA into bacterial cells (transformation) is unknown. Here, we have investigated the potential of using CyDs in the transformation of chemically competent in-house, commercially available, and, on non-competent bacterial cells, with plasmid DNA of two different sizes. Possible interactions between CyDs and DNA were studied with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The presence of CyDs resulted in an up to fourfold increment of the transformation rate for in-house cells, with beta-CyD and derivates giving the strongest effect. For commercial cells and transformation with megaplasmids, a more moderate effect around 1.4-fold was obtained. However, CyDs have little or no effect on DNA uptake by noncompetent cells. Results obtained from NMR spectroscopy show no interactions between CyDs and DNA-like molecules, which indicated that the CyDs' effect is related to the bacterial cell wall.

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