Highly efficient expression of Rasamsonia emersonii lipase in Pichia pastoris: characterization and gastrointestinal simulated digestion in vitro

BACKGROUND

Acidic lipases with high catalytic activities under acidic conditions have important application values in the food, feed and pharmaceutical industries. However, the availability of acidic lipases is still the main obstacle to their industrial applications. Although a novel acidic lipase Rasamsonia emersonii (LIPR) was heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli, the expression level was unsatisfactory.

RESULTS

To achieve the high-efficiency expression and secretion of LIPR in Pichia pastoris GS115, the combinatorial optimization strategy was adopted including gene codon preference, signal peptide, molecular chaperone co-expression and disruption of vacuolar sorting receptor VPS10. The activity of the combinatorial optimization engineered strain in a shake flask reached 1480 U mL-1 , which was 8.13 times greater than the P. pastoris GS115 parental strain. After high-density fermentation in a 5-L bioreactor, the highest enzyme activity reached as high as 11 820 U mL-1 . LIPR showed the highest activity at 40 °C and pH 4.0 in the presence of Ca2+ ion. LIPR exhibited strong tolerance to methanol, indicating its potential application in biodiesel biosynthesis. Moreover, the gastrointestinal digestion simulation results demonstrated that LIPR was tolerant to pepsin and trypsin, but its activity was inhibited by sodium taurodeoxycholate.

CONCLUSION

This study provided an effective approach for the high expression of acidic lipase LIPR. LIPR was more appropriate for lipid digestion in the stomach than in intestine according to the gastrointestinal digestion simulation results. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.

Improved Homologous Expression of the Acidic Lipase from Aspergillus niger

In this study, the acidic lipase from Aspergillus niger (ANL) was homologously expressed in A. niger. The expression of ANL was significantly improved by the expression of the native ANL with the introns, the addition of the Kozak sequence and the optimization of the signal sequences. When the cDNA sequence of ANL fused with the glaA signal was expressed under the gpdA promoter in A. niger, no lipase activity could be detected. We then tried to improve the expression by using the full-length ANL gene containing three introns, and the lipase activity in the supernatant reached 75.80 U/ml, probably as a result of a more stable mRNA structure. The expression was further improved to 100.60 U/ml by introducing a Kozak sequence around the start codon due to a higher translation efficiency. Finally, the effects of three signal sequences including the cbhI signal, the ANL signal and the glaA signal on the lipase expression were evaluated. The transformant with the cbhI signal showed the highest lipase activity (314.67 U/ml), which was 1.90-fold and 3.13-fold higher than those with the ANL signal and the glaA signal, respectively. The acidic lipase was characterized and its highest activity was detected at pH 3.0 and a temperature of 45°C. These results provided promising strategies for the production of the acidic lipase from A. niger.