Cloning, characterization and overproduction of nuclease S1 gene (nucS) from Aspergillus oryzae

The nuclease S1 gene (nucS) from Aspergillus oryzae was isolated using a polymerase-chain-reaction-amplified DNA fragment as a probe, and a 2.6-kb SalI-EcoRI fragment containing the nucS gene was sequenced. It was deduced that the nucS gene had two short introns, 49 and 50 nucleotides in length. The nucS gene had an open-reading frame of 963 base pairs and coded for a protein of 287 amino acid residues, comprising the signal peptide of 20 amino acids and a mature protein of 267 amino acids. The deduced amino acid sequence agreed well with the published amino acid sequence except for one substitution. Southern hybridization analysis showed that the nucS gene existed as a single copy in the A. oryzae chromosome. When the structural gene of nucS was fused with the promoter of the glaA gene and introduced into A. oryzae, the yield of secreted nuclease S1 increased about 100-fold compared with the recipient strain.

S1 nuclease: immunoaffinity purification and evidence for the proximity of cysteine 25 to the substrate binding site

A simple procedure, involving heat treatment, gel filtration on Sephadex-G 100 followed by chromatography on anti-S1 nuclease antibodies bound to Sepharose, was developed for purification of S1 nuclease to homogeneity with an overall yield of 72%. S1 nuclease was rapidly inactivated, at pH 6.0 and 37 degrees C, in presence of o-phthalaldehyde. Kinetic analysis of o-phthalaldehyde medicated inactivation showed that the reaction followed pseudo-first-order kinetics and the loss of enzyme activity was due to the formation of a single isoindole derivative per molecule of the enzyme. Absorbance and fluorescence spectrophotometric data also gave similar results. The isoindole derivative formation, as a result of o-phthalaldehyde treatment is known to occur through crosslinking of the thiol group of cysteine and the epsilon-amino group of lysine, situated in close proximity in the native enzyme. Since, modification of the only available cysteine residue (Cys25) did not affect the catalytic activity of the enzyme, the o-phthalaldehyde mediated inactivation of S1 nuclease is due to the modification of lysine. Substrates of S1 nuclease, namely ssDNA, RNA, 3'AMP, could protect the enzyme against o-phthalaldehyde mediated inactivation. Moreover, the modified enzyme (having very little catalytic activity) showed a significant decrease in its ability to bind 5'AMP, a competitive inhibitor of S1 nuclease, suggesting that the modification has occurred at the substrate binding site. The above results point towards the presence of cysteine 25 in close proximity to the substrate binding site.

Active-site characterization of S1 nuclease. I. Affinity purification and influence of amino-group modification

A simple procedure, involving heat-treatment, DEAE-Sephadex, AMP-Sepharose and Bio-Gel P-60 chromatography, was developed for the purification of S1 nuclease to homogeneity from commercially available Takadiastase powder. Chemical modification of the amino groups of purified S1 nuclease revealed that lysine is essential for single-stranded DNAase, RNAase and phosphomonoesterase activities associated with the enzyme. The kinetics of inactivation suggested the involvement of a single lysine residue in the active site of the enzyme. Additionally, lysine modification was accompanied by a concomitant loss of all the activities of the enzyme, indicating the presence of a common catalytic site responsible for the hydrolysis of single-stranded DNA, RNA and 3'-AMP. Substrate-protection and inhibitor-binding studies on enzyme modified with 2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulphonic acid showed that lysine may be involved in the substrate binding.

Purification of S1 nuclease from Aspergillus oryzae by recycling isoelectric focusing

We describe the purification of a single-strand nuclease from Aspergillus oryzae using the first commercial prototype of an instrument (RF3TM) designed by Milan Bier et al. for preparative-scale isoelectric focusing. Protein separation takes place entirely in solution, with shear-stabilized laminar flow counteracting convective disturbances generated by the electric field. Conditions for isoelectric focusing were determined by focusing fractions with nuclease activity, following chromatography on DEAE-Sepharose, in analytical gels containing carrier ampholytes. The separation was then scaled up to process larger quantities of protein in the RF3. When partially-purified protein (250 mg, 6700 U/mg) was focused in pH 3-4 carrier ampholytes. 67% of the activity was recovered in pooled peak fractions with a specific activity of 54,000 U/mg protein. Overall, 82% of the activity loaded on the RF3 was recovered. Eliminating two steps prior to isoelectric focusing, and increasing the protein load from 250 mg to 1.2 g, produced an enzyme with a nearly four-fold increase in specific activity (from 4000 U/mg protein to 15,000 U/mg protein) but with unacceptable color. Our results indicate that a high quality enzyme can be prepared in quantity when heat denaturation and ammonium sulfate precipitation are included prior to isoelectric focusing.