Recent progress in microbial cell surface display systems and their application on biosensors

Microbial cell surface display technology is a recombinant technology to express target proteins on the cell membrane,which can be used to redesign the cell surface with functional proteins and peptides.Bacterial and yeast surface display systems are the most common cell surface display systems of prokaryotic and eukaryotic proteins,that are widely applied as the core elements in the field of biosensors due to their advantages,including enhanced stability,high yield,good safety,expression of larger and more complex proteins.To further promote the performance of biosensors,the biomineralized microbial surface display technology was proposed.This review summarized the different microbial surface display systems and the biomineralized surface display systems,where the mechanisms of surface display and biomineralization were introduced.Then we described the recent progress of their applications on biosensors for different types of detection targets.Finally,the outlooks and tendencies were discussed and forecasted with the expectation to provide some general functions and enlightenments to this aspect of research.

Cell Surface Display of Red-Grouper Nervous Necrosis Virus Capsid Protein on <i>Pichia pastoris</i>

Nervous necrosis virus (NNV), the etiological agent of viral nervous necrosis, has a high mortality rate of 100% in hatchery-reared larvae and juveniles. At present, there are still no effective vaccines available for NNV. Pichia pastoris surface display of viral capsid proteins was generated in hopes of developing an oral vaccine against red-grouper-nervous-necrosis virus (RGNNV) in fish. Fingerlings or juveniles that showed clinical signs of NNV infection were proved by RT-PCR for the appearance of expected length of 198 bpcDNA and further analysis by DNA sequencing. The DNA fragment containing AGα1 linked to RG-NNVRNA2, 2100 bp in length, was inserted into pPIC9K vector. Linearlized plasmids were electroporated into P. pastoris GS115 (mut+His?) and yeast isolates that had Muts?His+ and resistance phenotype at 4 mg/mL geniticin were selected to determine the integration of the target gene by PCR reaction. The extracted cell walls from the yeasts cultured in buffered-methanol-complex medium (BMMY) through an induction of 0.5% methanol for 6 days, were investigated for the fusion proteins by western blot. A protein band of 73 kDa predicted to be the fusion protein and a non-specific one of 56 kDa were detected. Staining of the fusion proteins expressing cells with corresponding antibodies revealed their presence of NNVRNA2, but varied the intensity of detected signals from cell to cell by confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy. The predicted fusion proteins tertiary structure also confirmed exposed conformation of the fusion protein on the cell wall. In this study, the capsid proteins from the red-spotted grouper nervous necrosis virus were successfully expressed on the cell surface of P. pastoris but still low levels of fusion protein expression. Further studies are required to optimize fully surface protein expression prior to evaluate the possible use of the constructed recombinant yeast as an oral vaccine against RG-NNV infection.

Improvement in affinity and thermostability of a fully human antibody against interleukin-17A by yeast-display technology and CDR grafting

Monoclonal antibodies(m Abs) are widely used in many fields due to their high specificity and ability to recognize a broad range of antigens. IL-17 A can induce a rapid inflammatory response both alone and synergistically with other proinflammatory cytokines. Accumulating evidence suggests that therapeutic intervention of IL-17 A signaling offers an attractive treatment option for autoimmune diseases and cancer. Here, we present a combinatorial approach for optimizing the affinity and thermostability of a novel anti-h IL-17 A antibody. From a large na?ve phage-displayed library, we isolated the anti-IL-17 A m Ab 7 H9 that can neutralize the effects of recombinant human IL-17 A. However, the modest neutralization potency and poor thermostability limit its therapeutic applications. In vitro affinity optimization was then used to generate 8 D3 by using yeast-displayed random mutagenesis libraries.This resulted in four key amino acid changes and provided an approximately 15-fold potency increase in a cell-based neutralization assay. Complementarity-determining regions(CDRs) of 8 D3 were further grafted onto the stable framework of the hu Fv 4 D5 to improve thermostability. The resulting hybrid antibody9 NT/S has superior stabilization and affinities beyond its original antibody. Human fibrosarcoma cellbased assays and in vivo analyses in mice indicated that the anti-IL-17 A antibody 9 NT/S efficiently inhibited the secretion of IL-17 A-induced proinflammatory cytokines. Therefore, this lead anti-IL-17 A m Ab might be used as a potential best-in-class candidate for treating IL-17 A related diseases.

Yeast surface display of leech hyaluronidase for the industrial production of hyaluronic acid oligosaccharides

Leech hyaluronidase(LHyal)is a hyperactive hyaluronic acid(HA)hydrolase that belongs to the hyaluronoglu-curonidase family.Traditionally,LHyal is extracted from the heads of leeches,but the recent development of the Pichia pastoris recombinant LHyal expression method permitted the industrial production of size-specific HA oligosaccharides.However,at present LHyal expressed by recombinant yeast strains requires laborious protein purification steps.Moreover,the enzyme is deactivated and removed after single use.To solve this problem,we developed a recyclable LHyal biocatalyst using a yeast surface display(YSD)system.After screening and charac-terization,we found that the cell wall protein Sed1p displayed stronger anchoring to the P.pastoris cell wall than other cell wall proteins.By optimizing the type and length of the linkers between LHyal and Sed1p,we increased the activity of enzymes displayed on the P.pastoris cell wall by 50.34%in flask cultures.LHyal-(GGGS)6-Sed1p activity further increased to 3.58×105 U mL−1 in fed-batch cultivation in a 5 L bioreactor.Enzymatic prop-erty analysis results revealed that the displayed LHyal-(GGGS)6-Sed1p generated the same oligosaccharides but exhibited higher thermal stability than free LHyal enzyme.Moreover,displayed LHyal-(GGGS)6-Sed1p could be recovered easily from HA hydrolysis solutions via low-speed centrifugation and could be reused at least 5 times.YSD of LHyal not only increased the utilization efficiency of the enzyme but also simplified the purification pro-cess for HA oligosaccharides.Thus,this study provides an alternative approach for the industrial preparation of LHyal and HA oligosaccharides.

Yeast display of MHC-II enables rapid identification of peptide ligands from protein antigens(RIPPA)

CD4^(+)T cells orchestrate adaptive immune responses via binding of antigens to their receptors through specific peptide/MHC-II complexes.To study these responses,it is essential to identify protein-derived MHC-II peptide ligands that constitute epitopes for T cell recognition.However,generating cells expressing single MHC-II alleles and isolating these proteins for use in peptide elution or binding studies is time consuming.Here,we express human MHC alleles(HLA-DR4 and HLA-DQ6)as native,noncovalentαβdimers on yeast cells for direct flow cytometry-based screening of peptide ligands from selected antigens.We demonstrate rapid,accurate identification of DQ6 ligands from pre-pro-hypocretin,a narcolepsy-related immunogenic target.We also identify 20 DR4-binding SARS-CoV-2 spike peptides homologous to SARS-CoV-1 epitopes,and one spike peptide overlapping with the reported SARS-CoV-2 epitope recognized by CD4^(+)T cells from unexposed individuals carrying DR4 subtypes.Our method is optimized for immediate application upon the emergence of novel pathogens.

Frontier of therapeutic antibody discovery:The challenges and how to face them

Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies have become an important class of modern medicines.The established technologies for therapeutic antibody discovery such as humanization of mouse antibodies,phage display of human antibody libraries and transgenic animals harboring human IgG genes have been practiced successfully so far,and many incremental improvements are being made constantly.These methodologies are responsible for currently marketed therapeutic antibodies and for the biopharma industry pipeline which are concentrated on only a few dozen targets.A key challenge for wider application of biotherapeutic approaches is the paucity of truly validated targets for biotherapeutic intervention.The efforts to expand the target space include taking the pathway approach to study the disease correlation.Since many new targets are multi-spanning and multimeric membrane proteins there is a need to develop more effective methods to generate antibodies against these difficult targets.The pharmaceutical properties of therapeutic antibodies are an active area for study concentrating on biophysical characteristics such as thermal stability and aggregation propensity.The immunogenicity of biotherapeutics in humans is a very complex issue and there are no truly predictive animal models to rely on.The in silico and T-cell response approaches identify the potential for immunogenicity;however,one needs contingency plans for emergence of antiproduct antibody response for clinical trials.

Improved degradation of azo dyes by lignin peroxidase following mutagenesis at two sites near the catalytic pocket and the application of peroxidase-coated yeast cell walls

The enzymatic degradation of azo dyes is a promising alternative to ineffective chemical and physical remediation methods.Lignin peroxidase(LiP)from Phanerochaete chrysosporium is a hemecontaining lignin-degrading oxidoreductase that catalyzes the peroxide-dependent oxidation of diverse molecules,including industrial dyes.This enzyme is therefore ideal as a starting point for protein engineering.Accordingly,we subjected two positions(165 and 264)in the environment of the catalytic Trp171 residue to saturation mutagenesis,and the resulting library of 104 independent clones was expressed on the surface of yeast cells.This yeast display library was used for the selection of variants with the ability to break down structurally-distinct azo dyes more efficiently.We identified mutants with up to 10-fold greater affinity than wild-type LiP for three diverse azo dyes(Evans blue,amido black 10B and Guinea green)and up to 13-fold higher catalytic activity.Additionally,cell wall fragments displaying mutant LiP enzymes were prepared by toluene-induced cell lysis,achieving significant increases in both enzyme activity and stability compared to a whole-cell biocatalyst.LiPcoated cell wall fragments retained their initial dye degradation activity after 10 reaction cycles each lasting 8 h.The best-performing mutants removed up to 2.5-fold more of each dye than the wild-type LiP in multiple reaction cycles.

Construction of the yeast whole-cell Rhizopus oryzae lipase biocatalyst with high activity

Surface display is effectively utilized to construct a whole-cell biocatalyst.Codon optimization has been proven to be effective in maximizing production of heterologous proteins in yeast.Here,the cDNA sequence of Rhizopus oryzae lipase (ROL) was optimized and synthesized according to the codon bias of Saccharomyces cerevisiae,and based on the Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell surface display system with α-agglutinin as an anchor,recombinant yeast displaying fully codon-optimized ROL with high activity was successfully constructed.Compared with the wild-type ROL-displaying yeast,the activity of the codon-optimized ROL yeast whole-cell biocatalyst (25 U/g dried cells) was 12.8-fold higher in a hydrolysis reaction using p-nitrophenyl palmitate (pNPP) as the substrate.To our knowledge,this was the first attempt to combine the techniques of yeast surface display and codon optimization for whole-cell biocatalyst construction.Consequently,the yeast whole-cell ROL biocatalyst was constructed with high activity.The optimum pH and temperature for the yeast whole-cell ROL biocatalyst were pH 7.0 and 40 °C.Furthermore,this whole-cell biocatalyst was applied to the hydrolysis of tributyrin and the resulted conversion of butyric acid reached 96.91% after 144 h.

Combinatorial cell surface display system in Escherichia coli for noninvasive colorectal cancer detection

Navigation and recognition of disease lesions remain challenging during colorectal cancer diagnosis and treatment,given that the precision and capacity of using specific surface antigens as recognition sites are relatively lacking.Moreover,the low penetration rate of noninvasive detection methods has delayed disease diagnosis in developing countries.We developed a bacterial device targeting the Thomsen-Friedenreich antigen,which is abundant on lesion tissue,and produced vesicles that serve as markers for ultrasonic detection.The device uses a bacterial cell surface display system and acoustic reporter gene to function as a screening device for colorectal cancer detection.The diagnostic efficiency of this device was determined by flow cytometry,immunohistochemistry,microfluidic chip-based assay,and ultrasonic examinations on both cellular and tissue scales.In all scales and experiments,our device showed great feasibility upon differentiating disease lesion and normal tissue,while foundation of the usage of vesicle reporter system as noninvasive method has also been laid.The application of this device provides insight into the practicability and prospect of bacterial detecting agents in the field of diagnostics.All animal studies were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Shanghai Jiao Tong University,China(approval No.201801015)on February 23,2018.

Development of surface displaying system for heterologous protein expression in Candida tropicalis

The purpose of this study was to assess the potential application of cell surface display in Candida tropicalis.Surface display gene cassettes were constructed using five anchoring proteins from Saccharomyces cerevisiae,three of which[(suppression of exponential defect protein,SED1),(cell wall protein 2,CWP2)and(delayed anaerobic protein 4,DAN4)]were reported to show higher activity of heterologous proteins thanα-agglutinin(AGα1).The performance of yeast-enhanced green fluorescent protein(yeGFP)was evaluated using laser scanning confocal microscopy and flow cytometry.The results showed that the three anchoring regions(SED1,CWP2 and AGα1)successfully displayed yeGFP on the cell wall.To investigate the effect of the three anchoring proteins on the surface display of Rhizopus oryzaeα-amylase(ROA1)and Aspergillus aculeatusβ-glucosidase(BGL1)in C.tropicalis,we constructed surface display gene cassettes for ROA1 and BGL1,respectively.The strains containing the anchoring proteins SED1 and CWP2 showed higher activity of ROA1 and BGL1 than the strains containing the anchoring protein AGα1.The highest ROA1 and BGL1 activities of strains with SED1 were 6.37 U/g CDW and 7.93 U/g CDW,respectively,which were sixfold and eightfold higher than those of strain with AGα1.In addition,we also optimized signal peptides.The results indicated that signal peptides have an impact on enzyme activity.

N-terminal residues of an HIV-1 gp41 membrane-proximal external region antigen influence broadly neutralizing 2F5-like antibodies

The Human immunodeficiency virus type 1(HIV-1) gp41 membrane proximal external region(MPER) is targeted by broadly neutralizing antibodies(e.g. 2F5, 4E10, Z13 e and m66.6), which makes this region a promising target for vaccine design. One strategy to elicit neutralizing antibodies against the MPER epitope is to design peptide immunogens mimicking neutralization structures. To probe 2F5-like neutralizing antibodies, two yeast-displayed antibody libraries from peripheral blood mononuclear cells from a HIV-1 patient were screened against the 2F5 epitope peptide SP62. Two 2F5-like antibodies were identified that specifically recognized SP62. However,these antibodies only weakly neutralized HIV-1 primary isolates. The epitopes recognized by these two 2F5-like antibodies include not only the 2F5 epitope(amino acids(aa) 662–667 in the MPER)but also several other residues(aa 652–655) locating at the N-terminus in SP62. Experimental results suggest that residues of SP62 adjacent to the 2F5 epitope influence the response of broadly neutralizing 2F5-like antibodies in vaccination. Our findings may aid the design of vaccine immunogens and development of therapeutics against HIV-1 infection.