Intein-mediated rapid purification of recombinant human pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide

In order to obtain the recombinant human PACAP efficiently by intein-mediated single column purification, a gene encoding human PACAP was synthesized and cloned into Escherichia coli expression vector pKYB. The recombinant vector pKY-PAC was transferred into E. coli ER2566 cells and the target protein was over-expressed as a fusion to the N-terminus of a self-cleavable affinity tag. After the PACAP-intein-CBD fusion protein was purified by chitin-affinity chromatography, the self-cleavage activity of the intein was induced by DTT and the rhPACAP was released from the chitin-bound intein tag. The activity of the rhPACAP to stimulate cyclic AMP accumulation was detected using the human pancreas carcinoma cells SW1990. Twenty-two milligrams of rhPACAP with the purity over 98% was obtained by single column purification from 1 liter of induced culture. The preliminary biological assay indicated that the rhPACAP, which has an extra Met at its N-terminus compared with the native human PACAP, had the similar activity of stimulating cAMP accumulation with the standard PACAP38 in the SW1990 cells. A new efficient production procedure of the active recombinant human PACAP was established.