Manipulation of carbon assimilation with respect to expression of the pac gene for improving production of penicillin acylase in Escherichia coli

High-throughput strategies for penicillin G acylase production in rE. coli fed-batch cultivations

Background

Penicillin G acylase (PGA) is used industrially to catalyze the hydrolysis of penicillin G to obtain 6-aminopenicillanic acid. In Escherichia coli, the most-studied microorganism for PGA production, this enzyme accumulates in the periplasmic cell space, and temperature plays an important role in the correct synthesis of its subunits.

Results

This work investigates the influence of medium composition, cultivation strategy, and temperature on PGA production by recombinant E. coli cells. Shake flask cultures carried out using induction temperatures ranging from 18 to 28°C revealed that the specific enzyme activity achieved at 20°C (3000 IU gDCW^-1) was 6-fold higher than the value obtained at 28°C. Auto-induction and high cell density fed-batch bioreactor cultures were performed using the selected induction temperature, with both defined and complex media, and IPTG and lactose as inducers. Final biomass concentrations of 100 and 120 gDCW L^-1, and maximum enzyme productivities of 7800 and 5556 IU L^-1 h^-1, were achieved for high cell density cultures using complex and defined media, respectively.

Conclusions

To the best of our knowledge, the volumetric enzyme activity and productivity values achieved using the complex medium are the highest ever reported for PGA production using E. coli. Overall PGA recovery yields of 64 and 72% after purification were achieved for crude extracts obtained from cells cultivated in defined and complex media, respectively. The complex medium was the most cost-effective for PGA production, and could be used in both high cell density and straightforward auto-induction protocols.

Strategies for enhancing the production of penicillin G acylase from Bacillus badius: influence of phenyl acetic acid dosage

Bacillus badius isolated from soil has been identified as potential producer of penicillin G acylase (PGA). In the present study, batch experiments performed at optimized inoculum size, temperature, pH, and agitation yielded a maximum PGA of 9.5 U/ml in shake flask. The experiments conducted in bioreactor with different oxygen flow rates revealed that 0.66 vvm oxygen flow rate could be sufficient for the maximum PGA activity of 12.7 U/ml. From a detailed investigation on the strategies of the addition of phenyl acetic acid (PAA) for increasing the production of PGA, it was found that the controlled addition of 10 ml of 0.1 % (w/v) PAA once in every 2 h from 6th hour of growth showed the maximum PGA activity of 32 U/ml. Thus, our studies for the first time showed that at concentration above 0.1 % (w/v) PAA, the PGA production decreased. This selective condition paves the way for less costly bioprocess for the production of PGA.

Biotechnological advances on penicillin G acylase: pharmaceutical implications, unique expression mechanism and production strategies

In light of unrestricted use of first-generation penicillins, these antibiotics are now superseded by their semisynthetic counterparts for augmented antibiosis. Traditional penicillin chemistry involves the use of hazardous chemicals and harsh reaction conditions for the production of semisynthetic derivatives and, therefore, is being displaced by the biosynthetic platform using enzymatic transformations. Penicillin G acylase (PGA) is one of the most relevant and widely used biocatalysts for the industrial production of β-lactam semisynthetic antibiotics. Accordingly, considerable genetic and biochemical engineering strategies have been devoted towards PGA applications. This article provides a state-of-the-art review in recent biotechnological advances associated with PGA, particularly in the production technologies with an emphasis on using the Escherichia coli expression platform.

New active site oriented glyoxyl-agarose derivatives of Escherichia coli penicillin G acylase

Background

Immobilized Penicillin G Acylase (PGA) derivatives are biocatalysts that are industrially used for the hydrolysis of Penicillin G by fermentation and for the kinetically controlled synthesis of semi-synthetic β-lactam antibiotics. One of the most used supports for immobilization is glyoxyl-activated agarose, which binds the protein by reacting through its superficial Lys residues. Since in E. coli PGA Lys are also present near the active site, an immobilization that occurs through these residues may negatively affect the performance of the biocatalyst due to the difficult diffusion of the substrate into the active site. A preferential orientation of the enzyme with the active site far from the support surface would be desirable to avoid this problem.

Results

Here we report how it is possible to induce a preferential orientation of the protein during the binding process on aldehyde activated supports. A superficial region of PGA, which is located on the opposite side of the active site, is enriched in its Lys content. The binding of the enzyme onto the support is consequently forced through the Lys rich region, thus leaving the active site fully accessible to the substrate. Different mutants with an increasing number of Lys have been designed and, when active, immobilized onto glyoxyl agarose. The synthetic performances of these new catalysts were compared with those of the immobilized wild-type (wt) PGA. Our results show that, while the synthetic performance of the wt PGA sensitively decreases after immobilization, the Lys enriched mutants have similar performances to the free enzyme even after immobilization.

We also report the observations made with other mutants which were unable to undergo a successful maturation process for the production of active enzymes or which resulted toxic for the host cell.

Conclusion

The desired orientation of immobilized PGA with the active site freely accessible can be obtained by increasing the density of Lys residues on a predetermined region of the enzyme. The newly designed biocatalysts display improved synthetic performances and are able to maintain a similar activity to the free enzymes. Finally, we found that the activity of the immobilized enzyme proportionally improves with the number of introduced Lys.

Optimization of the host/vector system and culture conditions for production of penicillin acylase in Escherichia coli

Culture performance for the production of penicillin acylase (PAC) in a bioreactor was investigated using HB101 or ATCC11105 as the host and pCLL2902, pCLL3201 or pTrcKnPAC2902 as the expression plasmid. We observed that the production of PAC by HB101 harboring pCLL3201 was, similar to ATCC11105, induced by phenyl acetic acid (PAA) and catabolicaily repressed by glucose, whereas the production of PAC by HB101 harboring pCLL2902 did not require PAA for induction and was not repressed by glucose. PAC activity of HB101 harboring pCLL2902 was significantly higher than that of HB101 harboring pCLL3201. There was no significant effect of host or carbon source on the production of PAC using pCLL2902. The production of PAC by HB101 harboring pTrcKnPAC2902, in which the pac gene expression was controlled by the trc promoter system, was about the same as that by HB101 harboring pCLL2902, when the culture was appropriately induced with isopropyl beta-d-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG). Therefore, the use of both pCLL2902 and pTrcKnPAC2902 could be expected to be feasible for industrial applications. However, optimization of IPTG induction for HB101 harboring pTrcKnPAC2902 might be required, since formation of inclusion bodies tends to limit the production of PAC in some cases.