[High efficient co-expression of leucine dehydrogenase and glucose dehydrogenase in Escherichia coli]

Different co-expression strategies to express leucine dehydrogenase and glucose dehydrogenase in E. coli were done to observe the effect of expression of different enzyme. A recombinant strain with two high enzyme activities was built for efficiently asymmetric synthesis of L-tert-leucine.

The leucine dehydrogenase (ldh) from Bacillus cereus and glucose dehydrogenase (gdh) from Bacillus sp. were co-expressed by three different strategies, including co-expressing two genes in single vector, co-expressing two genes in two vectors and expressing fusion protein. The catalytic efficiencies of recombinant strains with different enzyme activity ratio in different modes of biocatalyst were compared to produce L-tert-leucine from its corresponding α-keto acids.

Different co-expression strategies displayed a slight impact on leucine dehydrogenase expression, whereas, a greater impact on glucose dehydrogenase. All the activity of leucine dehydrogenase was normally expressed, but the fusion proteins lost the activity of glucose dehydrogenase. Besides, the activity of glucose dehydrogenase was also totally inhibited when the 6-histidine tag was fused at C termini, which indicated the additional 6-histidine tag considerately depressed the glucose dehydrogenase activity. After optimization of expression, three recombinant strains exhibiting high enzyme activity and different enzyme activity ratio were used to synthesis L-tert-leucine in the mode of cell-free extracts and whole-cell. Result displayed a great influence on the catalytic efficiencies resulted from the mode of catalyst and enzyme activity. When the cell-free crude culture broth of E. coli BL21/pET28a-L-SD-AS-G coexpressing two genes in single vector was used as biocatalyst, 15 g/L cell loading and 0.1 mmol/L NAD+ were enough to completely transform 0.5 mol/L trimethylpyruvate into L-tert-leucine.

The recombinant strain with high activities of leucine dehydrogenase and glucose dehydrogenase was achieved by co-expressing two genes in single vector without histidine tag in E. coli and L-tert-leucine was efficiently produced with this recombinant strain.