Engineering the assembly pathway of the baculovirus-insect cell expression system

Chaperone and foldase coexpression in the baculovirus-insect cell expression system

CONCLUSIONS

The BEVS has become widely utilized for production of recombinant proteins. However, protein aggregation and inefficient processing often limit yields, especially for secreted and membrane proteins. Since many proteins of pharmaceutical interest require similar posttranslational processing steps, engineering the folding, assembly, and secretion pathway may enhance the production of a wide variety of valuable complex proteins. Efforts should be undertaken to coexpress the relevant chaperones or foldases at low levels in concert with the final product to ensure the ideal folding and assembly environment. In the future, expression of oligosaccharide modifying enzymes and secretion factors may further improve secretion rates of assembled proteins and provide heterologous proteins with altered glycoforms. Also significant is the use of BEVS as an in vivo eucaryotic laboratory to study the fundamental roles of differnt chaperones, foldases, and secretion factors. The coexpression of chaperones and foldases will complement other approaches such as the development of alternative insect cell lines, promoters, and signal peptides to optimize the baculovirus-insect cell expression system for generating high yields of valuable proteins.

Insect cells as hosts for the expression of recombinant glycoproteins

Baculovirus-mediated expression in insect cells has become well-established for the production of recombinant glycoproteins. Its frequent use arises from the relative ease and speed with which a heterologous protein can be expressed on the laboratory scale and the high chance of obtaining a biologically active protein. In addition to Spodoptera frugiperda Sf9 cells, which are probably the most widely used insect cell line, other mainly lepidopteran cell lines are exploited for protein expression. Recombinant baculovirus is the usual vector for the expression of foreign genes but stable transfection of - especially dipteran - insect cells presents an interesting alternative. Insect cells can be grown on serum free media which is an advantage in terms of costs as well as of biosafety. For large scale culture, conditions have been developed which meet the special requirements of insect cells. With regard to protein folding and post-translational processing, insect cells are second only to mammalian cell lines. Evidence is presented that many processing events known in mammalian systems do also occur in insects. In this review, emphasis is laid, however, on protein glycosylation, particularly N-glycosylation, which in insects differs in many respects from that in mammals. For instance, truncated oligosaccharides containing just three or even only two mannose residues and sometimes fucose have been found on expressed proteins. These small structures can be explained by post-synthetic trimming reactions. Indeed, cell lines having a low level of N-acetyl-beta-glucosaminidase, e.g. Estigmene acrea cells, produce N- glycans with non-reducing terminal N-acetylglucosamine residues. The Trichoplusia ni cell line TN-5B1-4 was even found to produce small amounts of galactose terminated N-glycans. However, there appears to be no significant sialylation of N-glycans in insect cells. Insect cells expressed glycoproteins may, though, be alpha1,3-fucosylated on the reducing-terminal GlcNAc residue. This type of fucosylation renders the N-glycans on one hand resistant to hydrolysis with PNGase F and on the other immunogenic. Even in the absence of alpha1,3-fucosylation, the truncated N-glycans of glycoproteins produced in insect cells constitute a barrier to their use as therapeutics. Attempts and strategies to "mammalianise" the N-glycosylation capacity of insect cells are discussed.

The molecular biology of secreted enzyme production by fungi

Enzymes from filamentous fungi are already widely exploited, but new applications for known enzymes and new enzymic activities continue to be found. In addition, enzymes from less amenable non-fungal sources require heterologous production and fungi are being used as the production hosts. In each case there is a need to improve production and to ensure quality of product. While conventional, mutagenesis-based, strain improvement methods will continue to be applied to enzyme production from filamentous fungi the application of recombinant DNA techniques is beginning to reveal important information on the molecular basis of fungal enzyme production and this knowledge is now being applied both in the laboratory and commercially. We review the current state of knowledge on the molecular basis of enzyme production by filamentous fungi. We focus on transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of protein production, the transit of proteins through the secretory pathway and the structure of the proteins produced including glycosylation.

Baculoviruses as expression vectors

Recent advances in baculovirus expression vector technology include improvements to methods for the selection of recombinant viruses and further developments in virion display vectors. It is now also possible to modify the host cell glycosylation pathway to alter the structure of glycans added to the recombinant polypeptide. Baculovirus vectors also continue to be modified to facilitate gene expression in mammalian cells.

Engineering the folding pathway of insect cells: generation of a stably transformed insect cell line showing improved folding of a recombinant membrane protein

The baculovirus-insect cell expression system has proven to be a valuable tool for the high level production of a multitude of recombinant proteins. However, production of membrane proteins in infected insect cells is often hampered by incorrect folding and processing which results in the accumulation of non-functional protein. Here, we report the construction of a Sf9 insect cell line stably transformed with the ninaA gene from D. melanogaster (Sfn cell line). The ninaA protein is a membrane bound cyclophilin which acts as a peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase during the folding process of rhodopsin 1 in D. melanogaster rhabdomere. Engineered Sfn insect cells infected with a recombinant baculovirus bearing the human dopamine transporter gene under the control of the polyhedrin promoter showed a > or = 5 times enhanced uptake of [3H]dopamine in comparison to similarly infected Sf9 cells. This increase in specific transport activity was not due to an altered Km value in the Sfn cell line. The uptake in infected Sfn cells was blocked by the peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase inhibitor cyclosporin A which had no effect on infected Sf9 cells. From these results we conclude that the prolyl-cis/trans isomerase activity of the ninaA in the stably transformed Sfn cell line was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the improved folding of the heterologously produced human dopamine transporter.

Thioredoxin domain non-equivalence and anti-chaperone activity of protein disulfide isomerase mutants in vivo

Coexpression of the enzyme, protein disulfide isomerase (PDI), has been shown to increase soluble and secreted IgG levels from baculovirus-infected insect cells (Hsu, T.-A., Watson, S., Eiden, J. J., and Betenbaugh, M. J. (1996) Protein Expression Purif. 7, 281-288). PDI is known to include catalytic active sites in two separate thioredoxin-like domains, one near the amino terminus and another near the carboxyl terminus. To examine the role of these catalytic active sites in enhancing immunoglobulin solubility, baculovirus constructs were utilized with cysteine to serine mutations at the first cysteine of one or both of the CGHC active site sequences. Trichoplusia ni insect cells were coinfected with a baculovirus vector coding for IgG in concert with either the wild-type human PDI virus, amino-terminal mutant (PDI-N), carboxyl-terminal mutant (PDI-C), or mutant with both active sites altered (PDI-NC). Western blot analysis revealed that both immunoglobulins and PDI protein were expressed in the coinfected cells. To evaluate the effect of the PDI variants on immunoglobulin solubility and secretion, the infected cells were labeled with 35S-amino-acids for different periods, and the soluble immunoglobulins were immunoprecipitated from clarified cell lysates and culture medium using anti-IgG antibodies. Only coinfections with the wild-type PDI and PDI-N mutant led to increased immunoglobulin solubility and higher IgG secretion. In contrast, infection with the PDI-C and PDI-NC variants actually lowered immunoglobulin solubility levels below those achieved with a negative control virus. Immunoprecipitation with anti-PDI antibody revealed that heterologous PDI-C and PDI-NC were insoluble, even though PDI-N and wild-type PDI protein were detected in soluble form. The capacity for PDI-N to increase immunoglobulin solubility whereas the PDI-C mutant lowered solubility indicates that the amino- and carboxyl-terminal thioredoxin domains of PDI are functionally distinct in vivo following mutations to the active site. Furthermore, mutations at the active site of the carboxyl-terminal thioredoxin domain result in PDI variants that can act as anti-chaperones of immunoglobulin solubility in vivo as has been observed in vitro for lysozyme aggregation by wild-type PDI and PDI mutants (Puig, A., and Gilbert, H. F. (1994) J. Biol. Chem. 269, 7764-7771).

Molecular chaperones, folding catalysts, and the recovery of active recombinant proteins from E. coli. To fold or to refold

The high-level expression of recombinant gene products in the gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli often results in the misfolding of the protein of interest and its subsequent degradation by cellular proteases or its deposition into biologically inactive aggregates known as inclusion bodies. It has recently become clear that in vivo protein folding is an energy-dependent process mediated by two classes of folding modulators. Molecular chaperones, such as the DnaK-DnaJ-GrpE and GroEL-GroES systems, suppress off-pathway aggregation reactions and facilitate proper folding through ATP-coordinated cycles of binding and release of folding intermediates. On the other hand, folding catalysts (foldases) accelerate rate-limiting steps along the protein folding pathway such as the cis/trans isomerization of peptidyl-prolyl bonds and the formation and reshuffling of disulfide bridges. Manipulating the cytoplasmic folding environment by increasing the intracellular concentration of all or specific folding modulators, or by inactivating genes encoding these proteins, holds great promise in facilitating the production and purification of heterologous proteins. Purified folding modulators and artificial systems that mimic their mode of action have also proven useful in improving the in vitro refolding yields of chemically denatured polypeptides. This review examines the usefulness and limitations of molecular chaperones and folding catalysts in both in vivo and in vitro folding processes.

Baculovirus vectors for expression in insect cells

Recombinant baculoviruses now represent a mature technology in which vector development, particularly for the control of expression level, has reached a plateau. However, other aspects of expression, such as the production of multiple proteins, improved product purification or maximizing protein processing, remain areas for novel vector and host cell development. This year has seen these topics come to the fore in descriptions of new expression systems.