Transfer of disulfide bond formation modules via yeast artificial chromosomes promotes the expression of heterologous proteins in Kluyveromyces marxianus

Kluyveromyces marxianus is a food-safe yeast with great potential for producing heterologous proteins.Improving the yield in K.marxianus remains a challenge and incorporating large-scale functional modules poses a technical obstacle in engineering.To address these issues,linear and circular yeast artificial chromosomes of K.marxianus(KmYACs)were constructed and loaded with disulfide bond formation modules from Pichia pastoris or K.marxianus.These modules contained up to seven genes with a maximum size of 15 kb.KmYACs carried telomeres either from K.marxianus or Tetrahymena.KmYACs were transferred successfully into K.marxianus and stably propagated without affecting the normal growth of the host,regardless of the type of telomeres and configurations of KmYACs.KmYACs increased the overall expression levels of disulfide bond formation genes and significantly enhanced the yield of various heterologous proteins.In high-density fermentation,the use of KmYACs resulted in a glucoamylase yield of 16.8 g/l,the highest reported level to date in K.marxianus.Transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis of cells containing KmYACs suggested increased flavin adenine dinucleotide biosynthesis,enhanced flux entering the tricarboxylic acid cycle,and a preferred demand for lysine and arginine as features of cells overexpressing heterologous proteins.Consistently,supplementing lysine or arginine further improved the yield.Therefore,KmYAC provides a powerful platform for manipulating large modules with enormous potential for industrial applications and fundamental research.Transferring the disulfide bond formation module via YACs proves to be an efficient strategy for improving the yield of heterologous proteins,and this strategy may be applied to optimize other microbial cell factories.

Synthesis of nucleoside-peptide conjugate with disulfide bond as linker at C-5 of uridine

In order to prepare pyrimidine nucleoside-peptide conjugate concisely, we developed a one-pot synthetic strategy. Started from uridine, 5-S-acetyl-thiomethyl-2＇,3 ＇-di-O-isopropylidene-uridine （4） was synthesized as the key intermediate in four steps. Under acidic condition, compound 4 was deprotected and reacted with PySS-R （8, 12, 15, Py = 2-pyridyl, R = amino acid or peptide） in one pot to form uridine conjugates （9, 13, 2） with disulfide bond as linker.

Optimization of DsbA Purification from Recombinant Escherichia coli Broth Using Box-Behnken Design Methodolog

Disulfide bond formation protein A （DsbA） is one of the important helper proteins for folding in protein synthesis in vivo. In this study, purification of recombinant DsbA was investigated by examining four important factors with Box-Behnken design method, a statistic-based design of experiments. The optimal operation conditions were obtained by adopting the effectiveness coefficient method on the multi-objective problem, which takes the protein recovery, purification efficiency and throughput of ion-exchange chromatography into account. After the optimization, protein recovery of 96.8% and purity higher than 95% DsbA was achieved, and the productivity was （377.9±1.7） mg soluble DsbA per liter broth. The purified protein was identified by peptide mass fingerprinting matching the record of gil2624856, a mutant of DsbA. The DsbA was preliminarily applied to the refolding of denatured lysozyme in vitro.

A novel copper-sensing two-component system for inducing Dsb gene expression in bacteria

In nature, bacteria must sense copper and tightly regulate gene expression to evade copper toxicity. Here,we identify a new copper-responsive two-component system named DsbRS in the important human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa;in this system, DsbS is a sensor histidine kinase, and DsbR, its cognate response regulator, directly induces the transcription of genes involved in protein disulfide bond formation(Dsb)(i.e., the dsbDEG operon and dsbB). In the absence of copper, DsbS acts as a phosphatase toward DsbR, thus blocking the transcription of Dsb genes. In the presence of copper, the metal ion directly binds to the sensor domain of DsbS, and the Cys82 residue plays a critical role in this process. The copperbinding behavior appears to inhibit the phosphatase activity of DsbS, leading to the activation of DsbR.The copper resistance of the dsbRS knock-out mutant is restored by the ectopic expression of the dsbDEG operon, which is a DsbRS major target. Strikingly, cognates of the dsbRS-dsbDEG pair are widely distributed across eubacteria. In addition, a DsbR-binding site, which contains the consensus sequence 5’-TTA-N8-TTAA-3’, is detected in the promoter region of dsbDEG homologs in these species. These findings suggest that the regulation of Dsb genes by DsbRS represents a novel mechanism by which bacterial cells cope with copper stress.