A chromogenic substrate for solid-phase detection of phospholipase A2.

A method for solid-phase detection of phospholipase A2 (PLA2) was developed. The method uses 1-octanoyloxynaphthalene-3-sulfonic acid, which was found to be a good substrate of PLA2. The substrate is hydrolyzed by PLA2 into 1-naphthol-3-sulfonic acid, which is spontaneously coupled with coexisting diazonium salt to form a red-purple azo dye. Streptomyces and bovine pancreatic PLA2 spotted on a nitrocellulose membrane could be detected by this method with considerable sensitivity. In addition, colonies of recombinant Escherichia coli producing bacterial PLA2 were distinguishable from those producing an inactive mutant PLA2, facilitating high-throughput screening in directed evolution of the enzyme.

Extracellular production of phospholipase A2 from Streptomyces violaceoruber by recombinant Escherichia coli.

Phospholipase A(2) (PLA(2)) from Streptomyces violaceoruber was successfully produced extracellularly in an active form by using a recombinant strain of Escherichia coli. The PLA(2) gene, which was artificially synthesized with optimized codons for E. coli and fused with pelB signal sequence, was expressed in E. coli using pET system. Most of the enzyme activity was detected in the culture supernatant with negligible activity in the cells. The recombinant enzyme was purified to homogeneity from the culture supernatant simply by ammonium sulfate precipitation and an anion exchange chromatography. The purified enzyme showed a specific activity comparable to that of the authentic enzyme. The recombinant enzyme had the same N-terminal amino acid sequence to that of the mature protein, indicating the correct removal of the signal peptide. An inactive PLA(2) with a mutation at the catalytic center was also secreted to the culture medium, suggesting that the observed secretion was not dependent on enzymatic activity. A simple screening method for the PLA(2)-producing colonies was established by detecting clear zone formation around the colonies on agar media containing lecithin. This is the first example of direct extracellular production of active PLA(2) by recombinant E. coli.