Protein Expression and Purification, Vol.143, 77-82, 2018
Recombinant alpha-fetoprotein receptor-binding domain co-expression with polyglutamate tags facilitates in vivo folding in E. coli
A wide range of methods are known to increase the prokaryotic intracellular recombinant proteins solubility, for instance, growth at low temperature, supplementation of culture media with "chemical chaperones" (proline, glycine-betaine, and trehalose), coexpression with chaperones or highly soluble fusion partners. As an alternative, we have introduced the polyglutamate tag, which, as it has been shown, increased the protein solubility and facilitated folding. In this study we evaluated the minimal quantity of high density negatively charged EEEEVE amino acid repeats (pGlu) necessary to switch the recombinant receptorbinding domain of human alpha-fetoprotein (rbdAFP) expression almost entirely from the inclusion bodies to the soluble cytoplasmic fraction in E. coll. For this purpose, genetic constructs based on pET vectors coding rbdAFP and containing from 1 to 4 additional EEEEVE repeats at the Cterminus have been prepared. It was found that 3 pGlu repeats is the minimal number, that leads to a complete shift of the expression to the soluble cytoplasmic fraction in E. coli SHuffle Express T7 while 4 repeats were required for that in E. coil BL21(DE3). The rbdAFP contained 4 pGlu repeats was purified making use of ionexchange chromatography and characterized by circular dichroism and ability to bind and accumulate in AFP receptor positive cancer cells in order to check for the structural and specific activity alterations related to the additional polyanionic sequence introduction.
Keywords:Alpha-fetoprotein receptor-binding domain;rbdAFP;pGlu tag;EEEEVE;Soluble protein expression;E. coli in vivo protein folding