IGEM:Harvard/2006/Fusion proteins

Protein domain BioBricks presentation

General Fusion

1. Klein BK, Hill SR, Devine CS, Rowold E, Smith CE, Galosy S, and Olins PO. Secretion of active bovine somatotropin in Escherichia coli. Biotechnology (N Y). 1991 Sep;9(9):869-72. DOI:10.1038/nbt0991-869 |

2. We have expressed a chimeric protein, comprising the LamB secretion signal sequence fused to mature bovine somatotropin (bST), in Escherichia coli. Plasmid constructs with the recA promoter showed significant protein accumulation prior to induction and cell lysis occurred after induction. In contrast, the lacUV5 promoter was tightly regulated. With the lacUV5 promoter, temperature and inducer concentration had significant effects on the total amount of recombinant protein produced and the fraction processed to mature bST. Quantitation of bST from shake flask cultures showed that 1-2 micrograms/ml/OD550 could be released from the periplasm by osmotic shock. N-terminal sequence analysis of the purified protein indicated that the majority of the secreted bST was correctly processed. The bST present in the osmotic shock fraction was judged to be correctly folded by comigration with oxidized methionyl-bST standard on a non-reducing polyacrylamide gel and activity in a bovine liver radioreceptor assay. These results provide a rapid method to produce bST for use in structure-function studies.

3. Utsumi R, Brissette RE, Rampersaud A, Forst SA, Oosawa K, and Inouye M. Activation of bacterial porin gene expression by a chimeric signal transducer in response to aspartate. Science. 1989 Sep 15;245(4923):1246-9. DOI:10.1126/science.2476847 |
4. Moe GR, Bollag GE, and Koshland DE Jr. Transmembrane signaling by a chimera of the Escherichia coli aspartate receptor and the human insulin receptor. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1989 Aug;86(15):5683-7. DOI:10.1073/pnas.86.15.5683 |
5. Coulton JW, Mason P, Cameron DR, Carmel G, Jean R, and Rode HN. Protein fusions of beta-galactosidase to the ferrichrome-iron receptor of Escherichia coli K-12. J Bacteriol. 1986 Jan;165(1):181-92. DOI:10.1128/jb.165.1.181-192.1986 |
6. Sierke SL and Koland JG. SH2 domain proteins as high-affinity receptor tyrosine kinase substrates. Biochemistry. 1993 Sep 28;32(38):10102-8. DOI:10.1021/bi00089a028 |
7. Nordlund HR, Hytönen VP, Laitinen OH, and Kulomaa MS. Novel avidin-like protein from a root nodule symbiotic bacterium, Bradyrhizobium japonicum. J Biol Chem. 2005 Apr 8;280(14):13250-5. DOI:10.1074/jbc.M414336200 |

8. Bradyrhizobium japonicum is an important nitrogenfixing symbiotic bacterium, which can form root nodules on soybeans. These bacteria have a gene encoding a putative avidin- and streptavidin-like protein, which bears an amino acid sequence identity of only about 30% over the core regions with both of them. We produced this protein in Escherichia coli both as the full-length wild type and as a C-terminally truncated core form and showed that it is indeed a high affinity biotin-binding protein that resembles (strept)avidin structurally and functionally. Because of the considerable dissimilarity in the amino acid sequence, however, it is immunologically very different, and polyclonal rabbit and human antibodies toward (strept)avidin did not show significant cross-reactivity with it. Therefore this new avidin, named bradavidin, facilitates medical treatments such as targeted drug delivery, gene therapy, and imaging by offering an alternative tool for use if (strept)avidin cannot be used, because of a deleterious patient immune response for example. In addition to its medical value, bradavidin can be used both in other applications of avidin-biotin technology and as a source of new ideas when creating engineered (strept)avidin forms by changing or combining the desired parts, interface patterns, or specific residues within the avidin protein family. Moreover, the unexpected discovery of bradavidin indicates that the group of new and undiscovered bacterial avidin-like proteins may be both more diverse and more common than hitherto thought.

E. coli cell surface display

9. Jose J. Autodisplay: efficient bacterial surface display of recombinant proteins. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2006 Feb;69(6):607-14. DOI:10.1007/s00253-005-0227-z |
10. Cornelis P. Expressing genes in different Escherichia coli compartments. Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2000 Oct;11(5):450-4. DOI:10.1016/s0958-1669(00)00131-2 |
11. Jung HC, Lebeault JM, and Pan JG. Surface display of Zymomonas mobilis levansucrase by using the ice-nucleation protein of Pseudomonas syringae. Nat Biotechnol. 1998 Jun;16(6):576-80. DOI:10.1038/nbt0698-576 |

Notes on Autodisplay review (display1)

This is a review about the Autodisplay system used to express proteins on the E. coli cell surface. Some of the important features of this system are:

• Utilizes E.coli-native AIDA-I as scaffold
• Detection: monoclonal antibodies and protease cleavage sites created
• Protein unfolded during transport to cell surface.
• Variety of proteins have been displayed (p.610)
• Possibly to display catalytically active enzymes.
• Dimerization of proteins has been observed! (unique to this system); work on tetramers in progress. Protein anchor floats around membrane.
• Many proteins displayed: ~10^5 without loss of cell viability

The creator of the system wrote the review claims that system is superior compared to all other display systems, but he might be biased since he created the system.

Notes on expressing genes in different compartments review (display2)

This is a more general review which is actually mostly about cell-surface display techniques. It offers a wider range of options, but came out in 2000, so new options probably have become available.

• 5 options; a good summary is found on page 3.
  • Porins- Insert protein <= 60 residues
  • Fimbriae- Insert protein <= 15 residues
  • Lipoproteins
  • GPI anchor
  • Beta-autotransporter - same system as that used in display1

• The latter three were claimed to support large polypeptides. However, looking at a few of the articles seemed to suggest that they actually only tried them out with small polypeptides. The winners appear to be GPI anchors and beta autotransporters, although this might have changed in recent years. See display3 for the use of GPI anchors.

GPI anchor(display3)

I didn't read this one that thoroughly, but the point is that they forced E. coli to express functional levansucrase bound to a GPI anchor, Inp. Using these cells, they successfully converted sucrose to levan, which seems neat. Levansucrase, is about 400 a.a. residues long.

Related articles..

13. Valls M, González-Duarte R, Atrian S, and De Lorenzo V. Bioaccumulation of heavy metals with protein fusions of metallothionein to bacterial OMPs. Biochimie. 1998 Oct;80(10):855-61. DOI:10.1016/s0300-9084(00)88880-x |

Cd2+ binding

other1 is an old review article I came across talking about expressing metallothioneins on the cell surface of E. coli; these things bind Cd2+, so those interested in pollution cleanup might want to take a look.