Enhanced production of recombinant Staphylococcus simulans lysostaphin using medium engineering

Staphylococcus aureus, among other staphylococcal species, developed multidrug resistance and causes serious health risks that require complex treatments. Therefore, the development of novel and effective strategies to combat these bacteria has been gaining importance. Since Staphylococcus simulans lysostaphin is a peptidoglycan hydrolase effective against staphylococcal species, the enzyme has a significant potential for biotechnological applications. Despite promising results of lysostaphin as a bacteriocin capable of killing staphylococcal pathogens, it is still not widely used in healthcare settings due to its high production cost. In this study, medium engineering techniques were applied to improve the expression yield of recombinant lysostaphin in E. coli. A new effective inducible araBAD promoter system and different mediums were used to enhance lysostaphin production. Our results showed that the composition of autoinduction media enhanced the amount of lysostaphin production 5-fold with the highest level of active lysostaphin at 30 °C. The production cost of 1000 U of lysostaphin was determined as 4-fold lower than the previously proposed technologies. Therefore, the currently developed bench scale study has a great potential as a large-scale fermentation procedure to produce lysostaphin efficiently.