Complete solubilization and purification of recombinant human growth hormone produced in Escherichia coli

High-level expression of recombinant human growth hormone (hGH) in Escherichia coli (E. coli) leads to the formation of insoluble aggregates as inclusion bodies devoid of biological activity. Until recently, significant efforts have been made to improve the recovery of active hGH from inclusion bodies. Here, we developed an efficient procedure for the production of completely soluble hGH by minimizing the formation of inclusion bodies and optimizing protein purification conditions. Under the newly established conditions we were able to obtain most of the total hGH in the soluble fraction. We show that the soluble protein can be efficiently purified in high yield by a series of chromatographic procedures. We analyzed the resulting hGH using various analytical techniques such as reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), size-exclusion chromatography (SEC), matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry, and circular dichroism (CD). These multiple analyses support the conclusion that we obtained highly pure hGH with the expected molecular mass and intact secondary structure. The biological activity of purified hGH was also confirmed by evaluating its growth-promoting effect using a cell proliferation assay. Taken together, we describe a straightforward strategy for the production of completely soluble and biologically active hGH in E. coli.