scholarly journals GreA and GreB enhanceEscherichia coliRNA polymerase transcription rate in a reconstituted transcription-translation system

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea L. De Maddalena ◽  
Henrike Niederholtmeyer ◽  
Matti Turtola ◽  
Zoe Swank ◽  
Georgiy A. Belogurov ◽  
...  

Cell-free environments are becoming viable alternatives for implementing biological networks in synthetic biology. The reconstituted cell-free expression system (PURE) allows characterization of genetic networks under defined conditions but its applicability to native bacterial promoters and endogenous genetic networks is limited due to the poor transcription rate ofEscherichia coliRNA polymerase in this minimal system. We found that addition of transcription elongation factors GreA and GreB to the PURE system increased transcription rates ofE. coliRNA polymerase from sigma factor 70 promoters up to 6-fold and enhanced the performance of a genetic network. Furthermore, we reconstituted activation of naturalE. colipromoters controlling flagella biosynthesis by the transcriptional activator FlhDC and sigma factor 28. Addition of GreA/GreB to the PURE system allows efficient expression from natural and syntheticE. colipromoters and characterization of their regulation in minimal and defined reaction conditions making the PURE system more broadly applicable to study genetic networks and bottom-up synthetic biology.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Masuzu Kikuchi ◽  
Keiichi Kojima ◽  
Shin Nakao ◽  
Susumu Yoshizawa ◽  
Shiho Kawanishi ◽  
...  

AbstractMicrobial rhodopsins are photoswitchable seven-transmembrane proteins that are widely distributed in three domains of life, archaea, bacteria and eukarya. Rhodopsins allow the transport of protons outwardly across the membrane and are indispensable for light-energy conversion in microorganisms. Archaeal and bacterial proton pump rhodopsins have been characterized using an Escherichia coli expression system because that enables the rapid production of large amounts of recombinant proteins, whereas no success has been reported for eukaryotic rhodopsins. Here, we report a phylogenetically distinct eukaryotic rhodopsin from the dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina (O. marina rhodopsin-2, OmR2) that can be expressed in E. coli cells. E. coli cells harboring the OmR2 gene showed an outward proton-pumping activity, indicating its functional expression. Spectroscopic characterization of the purified OmR2 protein revealed several features as follows: (1) an absorption maximum at 533 nm with all-trans retinal chromophore, (2) the possession of the deprotonated counterion (pKa = 3.0) of the protonated Schiff base and (3) a rapid photocycle through several distinct photointermediates. Those features are similar to those of known eukaryotic proton pump rhodopsins. Our successful characterization of OmR2 expressed in E. coli cells could build a basis for understanding and utilizing eukaryotic rhodopsins.


1995 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zerlina M. Naczynski ◽  
Andrew M. Kropinski ◽  
Chris Mueller

A 31 base pair synthetic oligonucleotide based on the genes for the Escherichia coli heat shock sigma factor (rpoH) and the Pseudomonas aeruginosa housekeeping sigma factor (rpoD) was employed in conjunction with the Tanaka et al. (K. Tanaka, T. Shiina, and H. Takahashi, 1988. Science (Washington, D.C.), 242: 1040–1042) RpoD box probe to identify the location of the rpoH gene in P. aeruginosa genomic digests. This gene was cloned into plasmid pGEM3Z(f+), sequenced, and found to share 67% nucleotide identity and 77% amino acid homology with the rpoH gene and its product (σ32) of E. coli. The plasmid containing the rpoH gene complemented the function of σ32 in an E. coli rpoH deletion mutant. Furthermore, this plasmid directed the synthesis of a 32-kDa protein in an E. coli S-30 in vitro transcription–translation system. Primer extension studies were used to identify the transcriptional start sites under control and heat-stressed (45 and 50 °C) conditions. Two promoter sites were identified having sequence homology to the E. coli σ70 and σ24 consensus sequences.Key words: heat shock, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, sigma factor, transcription, oligonucleotide probe.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Hernandez Rollan ◽  
Kristoffer Bach Falkenberg ◽  
Maja Rennig ◽  
Andreas Birk Bertelsen ◽  
Morten Norholm

E. coli is a gram-negative bacteria used mainly in academia and in some industrial scenarios, as a protein production workhorse. This is due to its ease of manipulation and the range of genetic tools available. This protocol describes how to express proteins in the periplasm E. coli with the strain BL21 (DE3) using a T7 expression system. Specifically, it describes a series of steps and tips to express "hard-to-express" proteins in E. coli, as for instance, LPMOs. The protocol is adapted from Hemsworth, G. R., Henrissat, B., Davies, G. J., and Walton, P. H. (2014) Discovery and characterization of a new family of lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases. Nat. Chem. Biol.10, 122–126. .


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob H. Viel ◽  
Amanda Y. van Tilburg ◽  
Oscar P. Kuipers

The ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide mersacidin is a class II lanthipeptide with good activity against Gram-positive bacteria. The intramolecular lanthionine rings, that give mersacidin its stability and antimicrobial activity, are specific structures with potential applications in synthetic biology. To add the mersacidin modification enzymes to the synthetic biology toolbox, a heterologous expression system for mersacidin in Escherichia coli has recently been developed. While this system was able to produce fully modified mersacidin precursor peptide that could be activated by Bacillus amyloliquefaciens supernatant and showed that mersacidin was activated in an additional proteolytic step after transportation out of the cell, it lacked a mechanism for clean and straightforward leader processing. Here, the protease responsible for activating mersacidin was identified and heterologously produced in E. coli, improving the previously reported heterologous expression system. By screening multiple proteases, the stringency of proteolytic activity directly next to a very small lanthionine ring is demonstrated, and the full two-step proteolytic activation of mersacidin was elucidated. Additionally, the effect of partial leader processing on diffusion and antimicrobial activity is assessed, shedding light on the function of two-step leader processing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Du ◽  
Yun-Qi Liu ◽  
Ying-Shuang Xu ◽  
Zi-Jia Li ◽  
Yu-Zhou Wang ◽  
...  

AbstractEscherichia coli is the most widely used bacterium in prokaryotic expression system for the production of recombinant proteins. In BL21 (DE3), the gene encoding the T7 RNA polymerase (T7 RNAP) is under control of the strong lacUV5 promoter (PlacUV5), which is leakier and more active than wild-type lac promoter (PlacWT) under certain growth conditions. These characteristics are not advantageous for the production of those recombinant proteins with toxic or growth-burdened. On the one hand, leakage expression of T7 RNAP leads to rapid production of target proteins under non-inducing period, which sucks resources away from cellular growth. Moreover, in non-inducing or inducing period, high expression of T7 RNAP production leads to the high-production of hard-to-express proteins, which may all lead to loss of the expression plasmid or the occurrence of mutations in the expressed gene. Therefore, more BL21 (DE3)-derived variant strains with rigorous expression and different expression level of T7 RNAP should be developed. Hence, we replaced PlacUV5 with other inducible promoters respectively, including arabinose promoter (ParaBAD), rhamnose promoter (PrhaBAD), tetracycline promoter (Ptet), in order to optimize the production of recombinant protein by regulating the transcription level and the leakage level of T7 RNAP. Compared with BL21 (DE3), the constructed engineered strains had higher sensitivity to inducers, among which rhamnose and tetracycline promoters had the lowest leakage ability. In the production of glucose dehydrogenase (GDH), a protein that causes host autolysis, the engineered strain BL21 (DE3::ara) exhibited higher biomass, cell survival rate and foreign protein expression level than that of BL21 (DE3). In addition, these engineered strains had been successfully applied to improve the production of membrane proteins, including E. coli cytosine transporter protein (CodB), the E. coli membrane protein insertase/foldase (YidC), and the E. coli F-ATPase subunit b (Ecb). The engineered strains constructed in this paper provided more host choices for the production of recombinant proteins.


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