High-yield soluble expression and simple purification of the antimicrobial peptide OG2 using the intein system in Escherichia coli

Biomed Res Int. 2013:2013:754319. doi: 10.1155/2013/754319. Epub 2013 Jul 2.

Abstract

OG2 is a modified antimicrobial peptide, that is, derived from the frog peptide Palustrin-OG1. It has high antimicrobial activity and low cytotoxicity, and it is therefore promising as a therapeutic agent. Both prokaryotic (Escherichia coli) and eukaryotic (Pichia pastoris) production host systems were used to produce OG2 in our previous study; however, it was difficult to achieve high expression yields and efficient purification. In this study, we achieved high-yield OG2 expression using the intein fusion system. The optimized OG2 gene was cloned into the pTWIN1 vector to generate pTWIN-OG2-intein2 (C-terminal fusion vector) and pTWIN-intein1-OG2 (N-terminal fusion vector). Nearly 70% of the expressed OG2-intein2 was soluble after the IPTG concentration and induction temperature were decreased, whereas only 42% of the expressed of intein1-OG2 was soluble. Up to 75 mg of OG2-intein2 was obtained from a 1l culture, and 85% of the protein was cleaved by 100 mM DTT. Intein1-OG2 was less amenable to cleavage due to the inhibition of cleavage by the N-terminal amino acid of OG2. The purified OG2 exhibited strong antimicrobial activity against E. coli K88. The intein system is the best currently available system for the cost-effective production of OG2.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Anti-Infective Agents
  • Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / biosynthesis*
  • Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / genetics
  • Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / isolation & purification*
  • Cloning, Molecular
  • Escherichia coli / genetics
  • Genetic Vectors
  • Humans
  • Inteins / genetics*
  • Pichia / genetics
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins / biosynthesis*
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins / genetics

Substances

  • Anti-Infective Agents
  • Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins
  • palustrin-OG1, Odorrana grahami