Multiple mutagenesis of the Candida rugosa LIP1 gene and optimum production of recombinant LIP1 expressed in Pichia pastoris

Contribution of the Oligomeric State to the Thermostability of Isoenzyme 3 from Candida rugosa

Thermophilic proteins have evolved different strategies to maintain structure and function at high temperatures; they have large, hydrophobic cores, and feature increased electrostatic interactions, with disulfide bonds, salt-bridging, and surface charges. Oligomerization is also recognized as a mechanism for protein stabilization to confer a thermophilic adaptation. Mesophilic proteins are less thermostable than their thermophilic homologs, but oligomerization plays an important role in biological processes on a wide variety of mesophilic enzymes, including thermostabilization. The mesophilic yeast Candida rugosa contains a complex family of highly related lipase isoenzymes. Lip3 has been purified and characterized in two oligomeric states, monomer (mLip3) and dimer (dLip3), and crystallized in a dimeric conformation, providing a perfect model for studying the effects of homodimerization on mesophilic enzymes. We studied kinetics and stability at different pHs and temperatures, using the response surface methodology to compare both forms. At the kinetic level, homodimerization expanded Lip3 specificity (serving as a better catalyst on soluble substrates). Indeed, dimerization increased its thermostability by more than 15 °C (maximum temperature for dLip3 was out of the experimental range; >50 °C), and increased the pH stability by nearly one pH unit, demonstrating that oligomerization is a viable strategy for the stabilization of mesophilic enzymes.

Improved production and characterization of Volvariella volvacea Endoglucanase 1 expressed in Pichia pastoris

Endoglucanase 1 (EG1) isolated from the straw mushroom has great potential in the textile and paper industries. Improving EG1 expression level will add to its value for industrial applications. In this study, we employed two combined strategies to enhance the expression quantity of EG1, which are increase the copy number of EG1 and enhance the folding and secretion efficiency of EG1 in the endoplasmic reticulum by overexpress HAC1. Multiple plasmids, which contains four copies of EG1, were constructed by isocaudamers, resulted a recombinant strain with EG1 activity up to 39.6 U/mL, 262% higher than that measured in the strain containing only a single copy. A significant increase in activity (151%) was found when eight copies of EG1 was introduced into a different host, compared with a host harboring four copies. Further overexpression of the HAC1 transcription factor in the host harboring eight EG1 copies led to activity of 91.9 U/mL, which is 619% higher than that measured in the original strain. Finally, EG1 activity of 650.1 U/mL was achieved in a 3-L scaled-up fed-batch fermenter and the protein yield was 4.05 g/L. The characteristics of recombinant EG1 were also investigated, the optimal values for enzyme activity were 60 °C and pH 5.0, which yielded a catalytic efficiency of 312.9 mL mg^-1min^-1 using carboxymethyl cellulose(CMC) as the substrate.

Overexpression of Candida rugosa lipase Lip1 via combined strategies in Pichia pastoris

In this study, combined strategies were employed to heterologously overexpress Candida rugosa lipase Lip1 (CRL1) in a Pichia pastoris system. The LIP1 gene was systematically codon-optimized and synthesized in vitro. The Lip1 activity of a recombinant strain harboring three copies of the codon-optimized LIP1 gene reached 1200 U/mL in a shake flask culture. Higher lipase activity, 1450 U/mL, was obtained using a five copy number construct. Co-expressing one copy of the ERO1p and BiP chaperones with Lip1p, the CRL1 lipase yield further reached 1758 U/mL, which was significantly higher than that achieved by expressing Lip1p alone or only co-expressing one molecular chaperone. When cultivated in a 3 L fermenter under optimal conditions, the recombinant strain GS115/87-ZA-ERO1p-BiP #7, expressing the molecular chaperones Ero1p and BiP, produced 13,490 U/mL of lipase activity at 130 h, which was greater than the 11,400 U/mL of activity for the recombinant strain GS115/pAO815-α-mCRL1 #87, which did not express a molecular chaperone. This study indicates that a strategy of combining codon optimization with co-expression of molecular chaperones has great potential for the industrial-scale production of pure CRL1.

Modulation of the thermostability and substrate specificity of Candida rugosa lipase1 by altering the acyl-binding residue Gly414 at the α-helix-connecting bend

Candida rugosa Lipase1 (LIP1) is widely used in industrial applications. Optimizing its catalytic performance is still a challenging goal for protein engineers. Mutagenesis of key residues in the active site of the enzyme may provide an effective strategy for enhancing stability and altering substrate specificity. In this study, multiple sequence alignment and structural analysis revealed that the acyl-binding residue, Gly414, of LIP1, which is located at a bend connecting α-helixes, was the non-conserved residue in five other isoenzymes. Using saturation mutagenesis, four mutants with improved stability (G414A, G414M, G414H and G414W) were obtained. Compared to the wild type, the best mutant (G414W) exhibited a remarkable 6.5-fold enhancement in half-life at 60 °C and a 14 °C higher T50(15). Its optimum temperature was increased by 15 °C. Simultaneously, G414W displayed a shift in substrate preference from medium-chain to short-chain pNP-ester. Modeling analysis showed that the multiple interactions formed by hydrophobic clusters and hydrogen bonds in the acyl-binding tunnel might lead to the observed thermostability improvement. Additionally, the bulky tryptophan substitution formed a strong steric hindrance to the accommodation of long-chain substrates in the tunnel. These results indicate that the key acyl-binding residues at the α-helix-connecting bend could mediate enzyme stability and catalytic substrate spectra.

Heterologous expression systems for lipases: a review

The production of heterologous lipases is one of the most promising strategies to increase the productivity of the bioprocesses and to reduce costs, with the final objective that more industrial lipase applications could be implemented. In this chapter, an overview of the most common microbial expression systems for the overproduction of microbial lipases is presented. Prokaryotic system as Escherichia coli and eukaryotic systems as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia pastoris are analyzed and compared in terms of productivity, operational, and downstream processing facilities. Finally, an overview of heterologous Candida rugosa and Rhizopus oryzae lipases, two of the most common lipases used in biocatalysis, is presented. In both cases, P. pastoris has been shown as the most promising host system.

Optimal production and biochemical properties of a lipase from Candida albicans

Lipases from microorganisms have multi-faceted properties and play an important role in ever-growing modern biotechnology and, consequently, it is of great significance to develop new ones. In the present work, a lipase gene from Candida albicans (CaLIP10) was cloned and two non-unusual CUG serine codons were mutated into universal codons, and its expression in Pichia pastoris performed optimally, as shown by response surface methodology. Optimal conditions were: initial pH of culture 6.86, temperature 25.53 °C, 3.48% of glucose and 1.32% of yeast extract. The corresponding maximal lipolytic activity of CaLIP10 was 8.06 U/mL. The purified CaLIP10 showed maximal activity at pH 8.0 and 25 °C, and a good resistance to non-ionic surfactants and polar organic solvent was noticed. CaLIP10 could effectively hydrolyze coconut oil, but exhibited no obvious preference to the fatty acids with different carbon length, and diacylglycerol was accumulated in the reaction products, suggesting that CaLIP10 is a potential lipase for the oil industry.

Characterization of codon-optimized recombinant candida rugosa lipase 5 (LIP5)

Recombinant Candida rugosa lipase 5 (LIP5) has been functionally expressed along with other isoforms in our laboratory. However, the characterization and codon optimization of LIP5 have not been done. In this work, we characterized, codon-optimized and compared LIP5 with commercial lipase. LIP5 activity on hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl (p-NP) butyrate was optimal at 55 °C as compared with 37 °C of the commercial lipase. Several assays were also performed to determine the substrate specificity of LIP5. p-NP butyrate (C(4)), butyryl-CoA (C(4)), cholesteryl laurate (C(12)), and N-carbobenzoxy-l-tyrosine-p-nitrophenyl ester (l-NBTNPE) were found as preferred substrates of LIP5. Interestingly, LIP5 specificity on hydrolysis of amino acid-derivative substrates was shown to be the highest among any lipase isoforms, but it had very weak preference on hydrolyzing triacylglycerol substrates. LIP5 also displays a pH-dependent maximum activity of a lipase but an esterase substrate preference in general. The characterization of LIP5 along with that of LIP1-LIP4 previously identified shows that each lipase isoform has a distinct substrate preference and catalytic activity.

Engineering the expression and biochemical characteristics of recombinant Candida rugosa LIP2 lipase by removing the additional N-terminal peptide and regional codon optimization

Candida rugosa lipase (CRL), an important industrial enzyme, has been established, containing several different isoforms which were encoded by the high-identity lip gene family (lip1 to lip7). In this study, we compared the expression and biochemical characterization with three different engineered lip2 constructions in the yeast Pichia pastoris. Our results showed that lip2 (lip2) has an overall improvement of 50% higher production yield (1.446 U/mL) relative to that of nflip2 (0.964 U/mL) at 7 days of cultivation time. Codon-optimized lip2 (colip2) has a 2.3-fold higher production yield (2.182 U/mL) compared to that of lip2 (noncodon-optimized; 1.446 U/mL) and nflip2 (0.964 U/mL), with a cultivation time of 5 days. This finding demonstrated that the removal of the N-terminus and the regional codon optimization of the lip2 gene fragment at the 5' end can greatly increase the expression level of recombinant LIP2 in the P. pastoris system. The distinct biochemical properties of our purified recombinant nfLIP2 and LIP2 suggested that they are potentially useful for various industrial applications.

C-terminal region of Candida rugosa lipases affects enzyme activity and interfacial activation

Candida rugosa contains several lipase (CRLs) genes, and CRLs show diverse enzyme activity despite being highly homologous across their entire protein family. Previous studies found that LIP4 has a high esterase activity and a low lipolytic activity and lacks interfacial activation. To investigate whether the C-terminal region of the CRLs mediates enzymatic activity, chimeras were generated in which the C-terminus of LIP4 from either residue 374, 396, 417, or 444 to residue 534 was swapped with the corresponding peptide from the isoform LIP1. A chimeric lipase containing the C-terminus from 396 to 534 of LIP1 on a LIP4 scaffold showed activity similar to that of commercial CRL on triolein, and lipolytic activity increased 2-6-fold over that of LIP4. Moreover, interfacial activation was also observed in the chimeric lipase. To improve its enzymatic properties, a novel glycosylation site was added at residue 314. The new glycosylated lipase showed improved thermostability and enhancement in enzymatic activity, indicating its potential for use in further application.

Asymmetric overlap extension PCR method for site-directed mutagenesis

Overlap extension PCR (OE-PCR) has been widely used in site-directed mutagenesis. The original OE-PCR included two rounds of PCRs and required tedious steps to purify the first-round PCR product. By combining asymmetric PCR and overlap extension, a novel asymmetric overlap extension PCR (AOE-PCR) method has been developed. This method consists of two separate asymmetric PCRs of around 30 cycles and a single cycle of annealing and extension after directly mixing the first-round PCR products. AOE-PCR eliminates intermediate purification steps and amplification of wild-type template and requires fewer PCR cycles, and is, therefore, a much simpler and faster and more efficient site-directed mutagenesis method than the original OE-PCR approach.

Ambiguous decoding of the CUG codon alters the functionality of the Candida albicans translation initiation factor 4E

The eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E is an essential and highly conserved protein. As a part of the translational machinery, it plays a key role in the recruitment of mRNA via binding to its m(7)GpppN 5' terminal cap structure. The opportunistic human pathogen Candida albicans is the only known eukaryotic organism with the ability to survive defects in mRNA capping, which suggests unique features of its eIF4E protein. Here, we provide the first experimental evidence of the function of the C. albicans putative gene orf19.7626 as an eIF4E protein. We also show that Ca4E(Leu116) and Ca4E(Ser116) protein variants, both of which occur naturally in C. albicans due to the ambiguous decoding of the CUG(116) codon, display different sensitivities to elevated temperature. Our results clearly point to the importance of the S4-H4 loop for the function of the Ca4E translation initiation factor, and suggest the possible regulatory role of the codon-reading ambiguity within this loop in C. albicans. We proved Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a useful tool organism for studies of C. albicans translation initiation apparatus.

Altering the substrate specificity of Candida rugosa LIP4 by engineering the substrate-binding sites

Candida rugosa (formerly Candida cylindracea) lipase (CRL) is an important industrial enzyme that is widely used in biotechnological applications such as the production of fatty acids and the synthesis of various esters. CRL comprises at least seven isozymes (LIP1-LIP7), which share a similar amino acid sequence but with different specificities for substrates. Previously, LIP4 was reported to have higher esterase activity toward long acyl-chain ester and lower lipase activity toward triglycerides. A296 and V344 of LIP4 were predicted to play decisive roles in its substrate specificity. In this study, site-specific saturation mutagenesis has been employed to study the substrate specificity of LIP4. Point mutations were separately introduced into A296 and V344 positions using degenerate primer sets containing 32 codons to generate two libraries of variants. LIP4 variants were heterologously expressed in the yeast Pichia pastoris. A specific plate assay was used to identify lipase-producing P. pastoris clones in a medium containing tributyrin. LIP4 variants with high activity toward short fatty acyl-chain triglyceride (tributyrin) were screened. Specificity analysis and biochemical characterization indicated that the recombinant variants A296I, V344Q, and V344H had properties remarkably different from those of wild-type LIP4. All three variant enzymes had significantly higher specific activities toward tributyrin than LIP4. In addition to short-chain triglyceride, A296I and V344Q also improved hydrolytic activities of triglycerides toward medium- and long-chain triglycerides tested. The results suggested that A296 played an important role in lipase activity and high-temperature dependence of LIP4, whereas it had no effect on the chain-length specificity in lipolytic reaction. The V344 residue had a significant effect on the substrate chain-length specificity of LIP4.

Asymmetric overlap extension PCR method bypassing intermediate purification and the amplification of wild-type template in site-directed mutagenesis

By combining asymmetric PCR and overlap extension, we developed a novel asymmetric overlap extension PCR (AOE-PCR) method for site-directed mutagenesis which bypassed the need for intermediate purification and excluded the amplification of a wild-type template. This method was used to introduce single base mutations into a small GTPase gene from cotton and to simultaneously introduce two mutations just by repeating this method using the first round AOE-PCR products as template. Our results suggested that the AOE-PCR method represents a valuable improvement of the original overlap extension PCR for site-directed mutagenesis.

Efficient production of active recombinant Candida rugosa LIP3 lipase in Pichia pastoris and biochemical characterization of the purified enzyme

Candida rugosa lipase (CRL), an important industrial enzyme, possesses several different isoforms encoded by the high-identity lip gene family (lip1 to lip7). In this study, an additional N-terminal peptide in front of the lip3 gene was removed by PCR, and the 18 nonuniversal serine codons (CTG) of the lip3 gene were converted into universal serine codons (TCT) by means of an overlap extension PCR-based multiple-site-directed mutagenesis to express an active recombinant LIP3 in the yeast Pichia pastoris. The regional synthetic DNA fragment (339 bp) is first recombined by primer assembly with 20 overlapping nucleotides, followed by specific overlap extension PCR with outside primers containing restriction enzyme sites for directional cloning into the pGAPZalphaC vector. The results show that the production yield (0.687 unit/mL) of N-fused lip3 (nflip3) has an overall improvement of 69-fold relative to that (0.01 unit/mL) of lip3 and of 52-fold (0.47 unit/mL) of codon-optimized lip3 (colip3) relative to that (0.01 unit/mL) of non-codon-optimized lip3 (lip3), with the cultivation time set at 5 days. This finding demonstrates that the reservation of the N terminus and the regional codon optimization of the lip3 gene fragment at the 5' end can greatly increase the expression level of recombinant LIP3 in the P. pastoris system. The purified recombinant LIP3 shows distinct biochemical properties compared with other isoforms.

Codon optimization of Candida rugosa lip1 gene for improving expression in Pichia pastoris and biochemical characterization of the purified recombinant LIP1 lipase

An important industrial enzyme, Candida rugosa lipase (CRL) possesses several different isoforms encoded by the lip gene family (lip1-lip7), in which the recombinant LIP1 is the major form of the CRL multigene family. Previously, 19 of the nonuniversal serine codons (CTG) of the lip1 gene hav been successfully converted into universal serine codons (TCT) by overlap extension PCR-based multiple-site-directed mutagenesis to express an active recombinant LIP1 in the yeast Pichia pastoris. To improve the expression efficiency of recombinant LIP1 in P. pastoris, a regional synthetic gene fragment of lip1 near the 5' end of a transcript has been constructed to match P. pastoris-preferred codon usage for simple scale-up fermentation. The present results show that the production level (152 mg/L) of coLIP1 (codon-optimized LIP1) has an overall improvement of 4.6-fold relative to that (33 mg/L) of non-codon-optimized LIP1 with only half the cultivation time of P. pastoris. This finding demonstrates that the regional codon optimization the lip1 gene fragment at the 5' end can greatly increase the expression level of recombinant LIP1 in the P. pastoris system. More distinct biochemical properties of the purified recombinant LIP1 for further industrial applications are also determined and discussed in detail.

Understanding Candida rugosa lipases: an overview

Candida rugosa lipase (CRL) is one of the enzymes most frequently used in biotransformations. However, there are some irreproducibility problems inherent to this biocatalyst, attributed either to differences in lipase loading and isoenzymatic profile or to other medium-engineering effects (temperature, a(w), choice of solvent, etc.). In addition, some other properties (influence of substrate and reaction conditions on the lid movement, differences in the glycosylation degree, post-translational modifications) should not be ruled out. In the present paper the recent developments published in the CRL field are overviewed, focusing on: (a) comparison of structural and biochemical data among isoenzymes (Lip1-Lip5), and their influence in the biocatalytical performance; (b) developments in fermentation technology to achieve new crude C. rugosa lipases; (c) biocatalytical reactivity of each isoenzyme, and methods for characterising them in crude CRL; (d) state-of-the-art of new applications performed with recombinant CRLs, both in CRL-second generation (wild-type recombinant enzymes), as well as in CRL-third generation, (mutants of the wt-CRL).