The role of lac operon and lac repressor in the induction using lactose for the expression of periplasmic human interferon-α2b by Escherichia coli

Production and Purification of LTB-RBD: A Potential Antigen for Mucosal Vaccine Development against SARS-CoV-2

Most of the current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are based on parenteral immunization targeting the S protein. Although protective, such vaccines could be optimized by inducing effective immune responses (neutralizing IgA responses) at the mucosal surfaces, allowing them to block the virus at the earliest stage of the infectious cycle. Herein a recombinant chimeric antigen called LTB-RBD is described, which comprises the B subunit of the heat-labile enterotoxin from E. coli and a segment of the RBD from SARS-CoV-2 (aa 439-504, carrying B and T cell epitopes) from the Wuhan sequence and the variant of concern (VOC)—delta. Since LTB is a mucosal adjuvant, targeting the GM1 receptor at the surface and facilitating antigen translocation to the submucosa, this candidate will help in designing mucosal vaccines (i.e., oral or intranasal formulations). LTB-RBD was produced in E. coli and purified to homogeneity by IMAC and IMAC-anionic exchange chromatography. The yields in terms of pure LTB-RBD were 1.2 mg per liter of culture for the Wuhan sequence and 3.5 mg per liter for the delta variant. The E. coli-made LTB-RBD induced seric IgG responses and IgA responses in the mouth and feces of mice when subcutaneously administered and intestinal and mouth IgA responses when administered nasally. The expression and purification protocols developed for LTB-RBD constitute a robust system to produce vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, offering a low-cost production system with no tags and with ease of adaptation to new variants. The E. coli-made LTB-RBD will be the basis for developing mucosal vaccine candidates capable of inducing sterilizing immunity against SARS-CoV-2.

Expression and Characterization of a New PolyG-Specific Alginate Lyase From Marine Bacterium Microbulbifer sp. Q7

Alginate lyases play an important role in preparation of alginate oligosaccharides. Although a large number of alginate lyases have been characterized, reports on directional preparation of alginate oligosaccharides by alginate lyases are still rather less. Here, a gene alyM encoding a new alginate lyase AlyM was cloned from Microbulbifer sp. Q7 and expressed in Escherichia coli. AlyM exhibited the maximumactivity at pH 7.0 and 55°C and showed special preference to poly-guluronic acid (polyG). Glycine promoted the extracellular secretion of AlyM by 3.6 times. PBS and glycerol significantly improved the thermal stability of AlyM, the enzyme activity remained 75 and 78% after heat-treatment at 45°C for 2 h, respectively. ESI-MS analysis suggested that AlyM mainly produced oligosaccharides with degrees of polymerization (DP) of 2-5. The results of ¹H-NMR showed that guluronic acid (G) occupied the reducing end of the end products, indicating that AlyM preferred to degrade the glycosidic bond at the G-X linkage. HPLC analysis showed that the hydrolysis products with a lower degree of polymerization contained more G. Therefore, AlyM shows good potential to produce alginate oligosaccharides with specific M/G ratio and molecular weights.

Microtiter miniature shaken bioreactor system as a scale-down model for process development of production of therapeutic alpha-interferon2b by recombinant Escherichia coli

Background

Demand for high-throughput bioprocessing has dramatically increased especially in the biopharmaceutical industry because the technologies are of vital importance to process optimization and media development. This can be efficiently boosted by using microtiter plate (MTP) cultivation setup embedded into an automated liquid-handling system. The objective of this study was to establish an automated microscale method for upstream and downstream bioprocessing of α-IFN2b production by recombinant Escherichia coli. The extraction performance of α-IFN2b by osmotic shock using two different systems, automated microscale platform and manual extraction in MTP was compared.

Results

The amount of α-IFN2b extracted using automated microscale platform (49.2 μg/L) was comparable to manual osmotic shock method (48.8 μg/L), but the standard deviation was 2 times lower as compared to manual osmotic shock method. Fermentation parameters in MTP involving inoculum size, agitation speed, working volume and induction profiling revealed that the fermentation conditions for the highest production of α-IFN2b (85.5 μg/L) was attained at inoculum size of 8%, working volume of 40% and agitation speed of 1000 rpm with induction at 4 h after the inoculation.

Conclusion

Although the findings at MTP scale did not show perfect scalable results as compared to shake flask culture, but microscale technique development would serve as a convenient and low-cost solution in process optimization for recombinant protein.