Directed evolution for soluble and active periplasmic expression of bovine enterokinase in Escherichia coli.

Bovine enterokinase light chain (EKL) is an industrially useful protease for accurate removal of affinity-purification tags from high-value biopharmaceuticals. However, recombinant expression in Escherichia coli produces insoluble inclusion bodies, requiring solubilisation, refolding, and autocatalytic activation to recover functional enzyme. Error-prone PCR and DNA shuffling of the EKL gene, T7 promoter, lac operon, ribosome binding site, and pelB leader sequence, yielded 321 unique variants after screening ~ 6500 colonies. The best variants had > 11,000-fold increased total activity in lysates, producing soluble enzyme that no longer needed refolding. Further characterisation identified the factors that improved total activity from an inactive and insoluble starting point. Stability was a major factor, whereby melting temperatures > 48.4 °C enabled good expression at 37 °C. Variants generally did not alter catalytic efficiency as measured by kcat/Km, which improved for only one variant. Codon optimisation improved the total activity in lysates produced at 37 °C. However, non-optimised codons and expression at 30 °C gave the highest activity through improved protein quality, with increased kcat and Tm values. The 321 variants were statistically analysed and mapped to protein structure. Mutations detrimental to total activity and stability clustered around the active site. By contrast, variants with increased total activity tended to combine stabilising mutations that did not disrupt the active site.

Studies of hydrogen isotope scrambling during the dehalogenation of aromatic chloro-compounds with deuterium gas over palladium catalysts.

Catalytic dehalogenation of aromatic halides using isotopic hydrogen gas is an important strategy for labelling pharmaceuticals, biochemicals, environmental agents and so forth. To extend, improve and further understand this process, studies have been carried out on the scrambling of deuterium isotope with protium during the catalytic deuterodehalogenation of model aryl chlorides using deuterium gas and a palladium on carbon catalyst in tetrahydrofuran solution. The degree of scrambling was greatest with electron-rich chloroarene rings. The tetrahydrofuran solvent and the triethylamine base were not the source of the undesired protium; instead, it arose, substantially, from the water content of the catalyst, though other sources of protium may also be present on the catalyst. Replacement of the Pd/C catalyst with one prepared in situ by reduction of palladium trifluoroacetate with deuterium gas and dispersed upon micronised polytetrafluoroethylene led to much reduced scrambling (typically 0-6% compared with up to 40% for palladium on carbon) and to high atom% abundance, regiospecific labelling. The improved catalytic system now enables efficient polydeuteration via the dehalogenation of polyhalogenated precursors, making the procedure viable for the preparation of MS internal standards and, potentially, for high specific activity tritium labelling.