Part:BBa_K3037001

Maltose Binding Protein (MBP-tag)

Maltose Binding Protein
Function	Expression
Use in	Escherichia coli
RFC standard	Freiburg RFC25 standard
Backbone	pSB1C3
Submitted by	Team: TU_Dresden 2019

Overview

The TU_Dresden 2019 team designed this biobrick in order to make a fusion protein BBa_K3037003 in accordance to the Freiburg RFC25 standard.

MBP was inserted into the (BBa_K3037000) vector for transformation and expressed in Escherichia coli. (more information)

Description

MBP is a well-established, reliable protein-tag that is meant to increase the solubility of the proteins it is fused to. Therefore it limits the risk of accumulation of overexpressed recombinant protein in inclusion bodies and increases the total protein yield. It can also improve expression of difficult enzymes like Cas9. It can further be used to purify proteins via affinity chromatography in amylose resin.[1]

Additionally, in this Biobrick a pre-scission site was included upstream and downstream of the coding sequence, so the tag can be easily removed by purification in a digest. Additionally the pre-scission sequence acts as a linker and thereby limits the risk of steric hindrance.

Many times in synthetic biology we design our own proteins, enzymes or new fusions of already existing proteins for our projects. This newly designed protein will require an expression host and E. coli is most of the time the first choice for this purpose. It can easily be used to produce large quantities of protein by overexpressing it. A recurring problem here can be insoluble expression, a phenomenon in which the overexpressed recombinant protein forms insoluble aggregates in the cell. These are called inclusion bodies. An easy way to circumvent this problem is to tag the protein with MBP. It was originally developed in the 1980s as an expression tag and was in the further research found to significantly increase the solubility of proteins it is fused to. [1] Additionally it strongly increases the cytoplasmic yield of the tagged protein. A common approach is to fuse it to the N-terminus of the protein in question, even though it has been shown to increase recombinant soluble expression in N- and C-terminal fusions.[1]

The other advantage of using a MBP-fusion strategy is its ability to bind to amylose resin. This way it can be used for fast and effective single step affinity purification. This resin is much more affordable than other affinity purification methods. The only issue that can occur with MBP is that it can create steric hindrance with the protein it is fused to due to its size. This can be avoided by adding a linker sequence. This BioBrick is designed in a way that avoids this problem from the beginning as a recognition site of the pre-scission protease recombinase was added upstream and downstream of the MBP coding sequence.

Pre-scission protease is a fusion protein of human rhinovirus (HRV) 3C protease and GST. It allows for on-column cleavage of tagged proteins in one step. [2] This way if the MBP, because of its large size can influence the activity of the purified protein it can be easily cleaved off by digesting it with the pre-scission protease. It is suitable for on-column and off-column cleavage.

Biology

Maltose Binding Protein is approximately 42 kDa in size and naturally occurs in E. coli. It is encoded in the malE gene. MBP is responsible for the uptake, breakdown and transport of a special carbohydrate, maltodextrin. [1]

Characterization

Outline

We performed the following characterization experiments:

1) Purification of MBP-tagged fusion protein

Experiments in detail

1) Purification of MBP-tagged fusion protein

A fusion protein of 230 kDa was expressed, N-terminally tagged with this MBP-tag, fused with NgoMIV and AgeI. This ensures translational fusion. The MBP-tag was used for purification.

Purification of 230kDa fusion protein on Amylose resin

The elution fractions contain a lot of protein. It is very likely that this is not due to a lack of specificity of the Amylose_MBP interaction but due to many truncated versions that are produced of the huge fusion protein.

Sequence

Assembly Compatibility:

• 10
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[10]
• 12
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[12]
• 21
  INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[21]

  Illegal BglII site found at 381
  
• 23
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[23]
• 25
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[25]
• 1000
  INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[1000]

  Illegal BsaI site found at 79
  

Design Notes

Prescission site upstream and downstream.

Codon optimized for E. coli with all forbidden restriction enzyme sites removed

Biobrick used Freiburg RFC25 standard

Prefix: GAATTCGCGGCCGCTTCTAGATAAGGAGGTCAAAAATGgccggc

Suffix: accggttaaTACTAGTAGCGGCCGCTGCAG

References

[1] https://www.genscript.com/bacterial-soluble-protein-expression-MBP-tag.html

[2] https://www.gelifesciences.com/en/us/shop/chromatography/resins/affinity-tagged-protein/prescission-protease-for-gst-tag-removal-p-00248