Abstract
The production of many pharmaceutical and industrial proteins in prokaryotic hosts is hindered by the insolubility of industrial expression products resulting from misfolding. Even with a correct primary sequence, an improper translation elongation rate in a heterologous expression system is an important cause of misfolding. In silico analysis revealed that most of the endogenous Escherichia coli genes display translational pausing sites that promote correct folding, and almost 1/5 genes have pausing sites at the 3′-termini of their coding sequence. Therefore, we established a novel strategy to efficiently promote the expression of soluble and active proteins without altering the amino acid sequence or expression conditions. This strategy uses the rational design of translational pausing based on structural information solely through synonymous substitutions, i.e. no change on the amino acids sequence. We demonstrated this strategy on a promising antiviral candidate, Cyanovirin-N (CVN), which could not be efficiently expressed in any previously reported system. By introducing silent mutations, we increased the soluble expression level in E. coli by 2000-fold without altering the CVN protein sequence, and the specific activity was slightly higher for the optimized CVN than for the wild-type variant. This strategy introduces new possibilities for the production of bioactive recombinant proteins
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.