Parallelized biocatalytic scanning probe lithography for the additive fabrication of conjugated polymer structures.

Scanning probe lithography (SPL) offers a more accessible alternative to conventional photolithography as a route to surface nanofabrication. In principle, the synthetic scope of SPL could be greatly enhanced by combining the precision of scanning probe systems with the chemoselectivity offered by biocatalysis. This report describes the development of multiplexed SPL employing probes functionalized with horseradish peroxidase, and its subsequent use for the constructive fabrication of polyaniline features on both silicon oxide and gold substrates. This polymer is of particular interest due to its potential applications in organic electronics, but its use is hindered by its poor processability, which could be circumvented by the direct in situ synthesis at the desired locations. Using parallelized arrays of probes, the lithography of polymer features over 1 cm2 areas was achieved with individual feature widths as small as 162 ± 24 nm. The nature of the deposited materials was confirmed by Raman spectroscopy, and it was further shown that the features could be chemically derivatized postlithographically by Huisgen [2 + 3] "click" chemistry, when 2-propargyloxyaniline was used as the monomer in the initial lithography step.

Biotechnological advances towards an enhanced peroxidase production in Pichia pastoris.

Horseradish peroxidase (HRP) is a high-demand enzyme for applications in diagnostics, bioremediation, biocatalysis and medicine. Current HRP preparations are isolated from horseradish roots as mixtures of biochemically diverse isoenzymes. Thus, there is a strong need for a recombinant production process enabling a steady supply with enzyme preparations of consistent high quality. However, most current recombinant production systems are limited at titers in the low mg/L range. In this study, we used the well-known yeast Pichia pastoris as host for recombinant HRP production. To enhance recombinant enzyme titers we systematically evaluated engineering approaches on the secretion process, coproduction of helper proteins, and compared expression from the strong methanol-inducible PAOX1 promoter, the strong constitutive PGAP promoter, and a novel bidirectional promoter PHTX1. Ultimately, coproduction of HRP and active Hac1 under PHTX1 control yielded a recombinant HRP titer of 132mg/L after 56h of cultivation in a methanol-independent and easy-to-do bioreactor cultivation process. With regard to the many versatile applications for HRP, the establishment of a microbial host system suitable for efficient recombinant HRP production was highly overdue. The novel HRP production platform in P. pastoris presented in this study sets a new benchmark for this medically relevant enzyme.

Restriction site free cloning (RSFC) plasmid family for seamless, sequence independent cloning in Pichia pastoris.

BACKGROUND: Tagging proteins is a standard method facilitating protein detection, purification or targeting. When tagging a certain protein of interest, it is challenging to predict which tag will give optimal results and will not interfere with protein folding, activity or yields. Ideally, multiple tags and positions are tested which however complicates molecular cloning and expression vector generation. In conventional cloning, tags are either added on PCR primers (requiring a distinct primer and PCR product per tag) or provided on the vector (typically leaving a restriction site scar). RESULTS: Here we report a vector family of 40 plasmids allowing simple, seamless fusions of a single PCR product with various N- and C-terminal tags, signal sequences and promoters. The restriction site free cloning (RSFC) strategy presented in this paper relies on seamless cloning using type IIS restriction endonucleases. After cutting out a stuffer (placeholder) fragment from the vectors, a single PCR product can be directly inserted in frame into all 40 plasmids using blunt end or TA ligations, requiring only verification of the orientation. We have established a RSFC vector family for the commonly used protein expression host Pichia pastoris and demonstrated the system with the secretory expression of horseradish peroxidase (HRP). HRP fusions to four tags (Myc, FLAG, His, Strep) and two fusion proteins (GFP and MBP) showed a 31-fold difference in volumetric activities. C-terminal tagging caused in some cases almost a complete loss of function, whereas N-terminal tags showed moderate differences. CONCLUSIONS: The RSFC vectors provide an unprecedented toolbox for expression optimization in P. pastoris. The results obtained with HRP underline the importance of comparing different tags to maximize activities of fusion proteins. In a similar fashion the RSFC strategy can be applied in other expression hosts to screen for optimal promoters, signal sequences or to facilitate the evaluation of (iso-) enzyme families.

Optimizing cofactor availability for the production of recombinant heme peroxidase in Pichia pastoris.

BACKGROUND: Insufficient incorporation of heme is considered a central impeding cause in the recombinant production of active heme proteins. Currently, two approaches are commonly taken to overcome this bottleneck; metabolic engineering of the heme biosynthesis pathway in the host organism to enhance intracellular heme production, and supplementation of the growth medium with the desired cofactor or precursors thereof to allow saturation of recombinantly produced apo-forms of the target protein. In this study, we investigated the effect of both, pathway engineering and medium supplementation, to optimize the recombinant production of the heme protein horseradish peroxidase in the yeast Pichia pastoris. RESULTS: In contrast to studies with other hosts, co-overexpression of genes of the endogenous heme biosynthesis pathway did not improve the recombinant production of active heme protein. However, medium supplementation with hemin proved to be an efficient strategy to increase the yield of active enzyme, whereas supplementation with the commonly used precursor 5-aminolevulinic acid did not affect target protein yield. CONCLUSIONS: The yield of active recombinant heme peroxidase from P. pastoris can be easily enhanced by supplementation of the cultivation medium with hemin. Thereby, secreted apo-species of the target protein are effectively saturated with cofactor, maximizing the yield of target enzyme activity.

An updated view on horseradish peroxidases: recombinant production and biotechnological applications.

Horseradish peroxidase has been the subject of scientific research for centuries. It has been used exhaustively as reporter enzyme in diagnostics and histochemistry and still plays a major role in these applications. Numerous studies have been conducted on the role of horseradish peroxidase in the plant and its catalytic mechanism. However, little progress has been made in its recombinant production. Until now, commercial preparations of horseradish peroxidase are still isolated from plant roots. These preparations are commonly mixtures of various isoenzymes of which only a small fraction has been described so far. The composition of isoenzymes in these mixed isolates is subjected to uncontrollable environmental conditions. Nowadays, horseradish peroxidase regains interest due to its broad applicability in the fields of medicine, life sciences, and biotechnology in cancer therapy, biosensor systems, bioremediation, and biocatalysis. These medically and commercially relevant applications, the recent discovery of new natural isoenzymes with different biochemical properties, as well as the challenges in recombinant production render this enzyme particularly interesting for future biotechnological solutions. Therefore, we reviewed previous studies as well as current developments with biotechnological emphasis on new applications and the major remaining biotechnological challenge-the efficient recombinant production of horseradish peroxidase enzymes.

Peroxidase gene discovery from the horseradish transcriptome.

BACKGROUND: Horseradish peroxidases (HRPs) from Armoracia rusticana have long been utilized as reporters in various diagnostic assays and histochemical stainings. Regardless of their increasing importance in the field of life sciences and suggested uses in medical applications, chemical synthesis and other industrial applications, the HRP isoenzymes, their substrate specificities and enzymatic properties are poorly characterized. Due to lacking sequence information of natural isoenzymes and the low levels of HRP expression in heterologous hosts, commercially available HRP is still extracted as a mixture of isoenzymes from the roots of A. rusticana. RESULTS: In this study, a normalized, size-selected A. rusticana transcriptome library was sequenced using 454 Titanium technology. The resulting reads were assembled into 14871 isotigs with an average length of 1133 bp. Sequence databases, ORF finding and ORF characterization were utilized to identify peroxidase genes from the 14871 isotigs generated by de novo assembly. The sequences were manually reviewed and verified with Sanger sequencing of PCR amplified genomic fragments, resulting in the discovery of 28 secretory peroxidases, 23 of them previously unknown. A total of 22 isoenzymes including allelic variants were successfully expressed in Pichia pastoris and showed peroxidase activity with at least one of the substrates tested, thus enabling their development into commercial pure isoenzymes. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that transcriptome sequencing combined with sequence motif search is a powerful concept for the discovery and quick supply of new enzymes and isoenzymes from any plant or other eukaryotic organisms. Identification and manual verification of the sequences of 28 HRP isoenzymes do not only contribute a set of peroxidases for industrial, biological and biomedical applications, but also provide valuable information on the reliability of the approach in identifying and characterizing a large group of isoenzymes.

Purification and basic biochemical characterization of 19 recombinant plant peroxidase isoenzymes produced in Pichia pastoris.

The plant enzyme horseradish peroxidase (HRP) is used in several important industrial and medical applications, of which especially biosensors and diagnostic kits describe an emerging field. Although there is an increasing demand for high amounts of pure enzyme preparations, HRP is still isolated from the plant as a mixture of different isoenzymes with different biochemical properties. Based on a recent next generation sequencing approach of the horseradish transcriptome, we produced 19 individual HRP isoenzymes recombinantly in the yeast Pichia pastoris. After optimizing a previously reported 2-step purification strategy for the recombinant isoenzyme HRP C1A by substituting an unfavorable size exclusion chromatography step with an anion exchange step using a monolithic column, we purified the 19 HRP isoenzymes with varying success. Subsequent basic biochemical characterization revealed differences in catalytic activity, substrate specificity and thermal stability of the purified HRP preparations. The preparations of the isoenzymes HRP A2A and HRP A2B were found to be highly interesting candidates for future applications in diagnostic kits with increased sensitivity.

Knockout of an endogenous mannosyltransferase increases the homogeneity of glycoproteins produced in Pichia pastoris.

The yeast Pichia pastoris is a common host for the recombinant production of biopharmaceuticals, capable of performing posttranslational modifications like glycosylation of secreted proteins. However, the activity of the OCH1 encoded α-1,6-mannosyltransferase triggers hypermannosylation of secreted proteins at great heterogeneity, considerably hampering downstream processing and reproducibility. Horseradish peroxidases are versatile enzymes with applications in diagnostics, bioremediation and cancer treatment. Despite the importance of these enzymes, they are still isolated from plant at low yields with different biochemical properties. Here we show the production of homogeneous glycoprotein species of recombinant horseradish peroxidase by using a P. pastoris platform strain in which OCH1 was deleted. This och1 knockout strain showed a growth impaired phenotype and considerable rearrangements of cell wall components, but nevertheless secreted more homogeneously glycosylated protein carrying mainly Man8 instead of Man10 N-glycans as a dominant core glycan structure at a volumetric productivity of 70% of the wildtype strain.

Recombinant protein expression in Pichia pastoris strains with an engineered methanol utilization pathway.

UNLABELLED: ΒACKGROUND: The methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris has become an important host organism for recombinant protein production and is able to use methanol as a sole carbon source. The methanol utilization pathway describes all the catalytic reactions, which happen during methanol metabolism. Despite the importance of certain key enzymes in this pathway, so far very little is known about possible effects of overexpressing either of these key enzymes on the overall energetic behavior, the productivity and the substrate uptake rate in P. pastoris strains. RESULTS: A fast and easy-to-do approach based on batch cultivations with methanol pulses was used to characterize different P. pastoris strains. A strain with MutS phenotype was found to be superior over a strain with Mut+ phenotype in both the volumetric productivity and the efficiency in expressing recombinant horseradish peroxidase C1A. Consequently, either of the enzymes dihydroxyacetone synthase, transketolase or formaldehyde dehydrogenase, which play key roles in the methanol utilization pathway, was co-overexpressed in MutS strains harboring either of the reporter enzymes horseradish peroxidase or Candida antarctica lipase B. Although the co-overexpression of these enzymes did not change the stoichiometric yields of the recombinant MutS strains, significant changes in the specific growth rate, the specific substrate uptake rate and the specific productivity were observed. Co-overexpression of dihydroxyacetone synthase yielded a 2- to 3-fold more efficient conversion of the substrate methanol into product, but also resulted in a reduced volumetric productivity. Co-overexpression of formaldehyde dehydrogenase resulted in a 2-fold more efficient conversion of the substrate into product and at least similar volumetric productivities compared to strains without an engineered methanol utilization pathway, and thus turned out to be a valuable strategy to improve recombinant protein production. CONCLUSIONS: Co-overexpressing enzymes of the methanol utilization pathway significantly affected the specific growth rate, the methanol uptake and the specific productivity of recombinant P. pastoris MutS strains. A recently developed methodology to determine strain specific parameters based on dynamic batch cultivations proved to be a valuable tool for fast strain characterization and thus early process development.