N-Linked glycosylation of antibody fragments in Escherichia coli

Glycosylation is the predominant protein modification to diversify the functionality of proteins. In particular, N-linked protein glycosylation can increase the biophysical and pharmacokinetic properties of therapeutic proteins. However, the major challenges in studying the consequences of protein glycosylation on a molecular level are caused by glycan heterogeneities of currently used eukaryotic expression systems, but the discovery of the N-linked protein glycosylation system in the ε-proteobacterium Campylobacter jejuni and its functional transfer to Escherichia coli opened up the possibility to produce glycoproteins in bacteria. Toward this goal, we elucidated whether antibody fragments, a potential class of therapeutic proteins, are amenable to bacterial N-linked glycosylation, thereby improving their biophysical properties. We describe a new strategy for glycoengineering and production of quantitative amounts of glycosylated scFv 3D5 at high purity. The analysis revealed the presence of a homogeneous N-glycan that significantly increased the stability and the solubility of the 3D5 antibody fragment. The process of bacterial N-linked glycosylation offers the possibility to specifically address and alter the biophysical properties of proteins.