An optimized intein-mediated protein ligation approach for the efficient cyclization of cysteine-rich proteins

Efficient splicing of the CPE intein derived from directed evolution of the Cryptococcus neoformans PRP8 intein

Intein-mediated protein splicing has been widely used in protein engineering; however, the splicing efficiency and extein specificity usually limit its further application. Thus, there is a demand for more general inteins that can overcome these limitations. Here, we study the trans-splicing of CPE intein obtained from the directed evolution of Cne PRP8, which shows that its splicing rate is ~29- fold higher than that of the wild-type. When the +1 residue of C-extein is changed to cysteine, CPE also shows high splicing activity. Faster association and higher affinity may contribute to the high splicing rate compared with wild-type intein. These findings have important implications for the future engineering of inteins and provide clues for fundamental studies of protein structure and folding.

Heterologous expression of recombinant urate oxidase using the intein-mediated protein purification in Pichia pastoris

The potential of urate oxidase (uricase) for clinical use has been highlighted because of its role in lowering the blood uric acid levels for the treatment of tumor lysis syndrome. In the present study, the codon-optimized synthetic gene of Aspergillus flavus uricase was fused to the Mxe GyrA intein and chitin-binding domain. The construct was inserted into pPICZA and pPICZαA vectors and electroporated into Pichia pastoris GS115 for the cytosolic and secretory expression. Transformants were screened on gradients of Zeocin up to 2000 μg/ml to find multi-copy integrants. For both constructs, colonies with more resistance were screened for the highest uricase producers by enzyme assay. PCR analysis confirmed successful cassettes insertion into the genome and Mut + phenotype. The gene copy index was determined to be two and five for cytosolic and secretory strains, respectively. Productivity of the cytosolic and secretory strains was found to be 0.74 and 0.001 U/ml culture media in order while the cytosolic recombinant enzyme accounted for about 6% of total proteins. One-step purification of the expressed uricase was done with the aid of the chitin affinity column, followed by DTT induction for intein on-column cleavage. The yield of 40.8 mg/L and K m of 0.22 mM was obtained for intracellular expression. It seems that the intracellular production of uricase can indeed serve as an effective alternative to secretory expression. Moreover, this is the first report considering cytosolic production of uricase using the intein-mediated protein purification in the methylotrophic yeast, P. pastoris.

Intein-mediated backbone cyclization of entolimod confers enhanced radioprotective activity in mouse models

Background

Entolimod is a Salmonella enterica flagellin derivate. Previous work has demonstrated that entolimod effectively protects mice and non-human primates from ionizing radiation. However, it caused a “flu-like” syndrome after radioprotective and anticancer clinical application, indicating some type of immunogenicity and toxicity. Cyclization is commonly used to improve the in vivo stability and activity of peptides and proteins.

Methods

We designed and constructed cyclic entolimod using split Nostoc punctiforme DnaE intein with almost 100% cyclization efficiency. We adopted different strategies to purify the linear and circular entolimod due to their different topologies. Both of linear and circular entolimod were first purified by Ni-chelating affinity chromatography, and then the linear and circular entolimod were purified by size-exclusion and ion-exchange chromatography, respectively.

Results

The circular entolimod showed significantly increased both the in vitro NF-κB signaling and in vivo radioprotective activity in mice.

Conclusion

Our data indicates that circular entolimod might be a good candidate for further clinical investigation.

An efficient protocol towards site-specifically clickable nanobodies in high yield: cytoplasmic expression in Escherichia coli combined with intein-mediated protein ligation

In this study, several expression strategies were investigated in order to develop a generic, highly productive and efficient protocol to produce nanobodies modified with a clickable alkyne function at their C-terminus via the intein-mediated protein ligation (IPL) technique. Hereto, the nanobody targeting the vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (NbVCAM1) was used as a workhorse. The highlights of the protocol can be ascribed to a cytoplasmic expression of the nanobody-intein-chitin-binding domain fusion protein in the Escherichia coli SHuffle(®) T7 cells with a C-terminal extension, i.e. LEY, EFLEY or His6 spacer peptide, in the commonly used Luria-Bertani medium. The combination of these factors led to a high yield (up to 22 mg/l of culture) and nearly complete alkynation efficiency of the C-terminally modified nanobody via IPL. This yield can even be improved to ∼45 mg/l in the EnPresso(®) growth system but this method is more expensive and time-consuming. The resulting alkynated nanobodies retained excellent binding capacity towards the recombinant human VCAM1. The presented protocol benefits from time- and cost-effectiveness, which allows a feasible production up-scaling of generic alkynated nanobodies. The production of high quantities of site-specifically modified nanobodies paves the way to new biosurface applications that demand for a homogeneously oriented nanobody coupling. Prospectively, the alkynated nanobodies can be covalently coupled to a multitude of azide-containing counterparts, e.g. contrast labeling agents, particles or surfaces for numerous innovative applications.