EP0717775A1 - Conditional suicide cells of e. coli etc. - Google Patents
Conditional suicide cells of e. coli etc.Info
- Publication number
- EP0717775A1 EP0717775A1 EP95923293A EP95923293A EP0717775A1 EP 0717775 A1 EP0717775 A1 EP 0717775A1 EP 95923293 A EP95923293 A EP 95923293A EP 95923293 A EP95923293 A EP 95923293A EP 0717775 A1 EP0717775 A1 EP 0717775A1
- Authority
- EP
- European Patent Office
- Prior art keywords
- gene
- cells
- nuclease
- promoter
- plasmid
- Prior art date
- Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
- Withdrawn
Links
Classifications
-
- C—CHEMISTRY; METALLURGY
- C12—BIOCHEMISTRY; BEER; SPIRITS; WINE; VINEGAR; MICROBIOLOGY; ENZYMOLOGY; MUTATION OR GENETIC ENGINEERING
- C12N—MICROORGANISMS OR ENZYMES; COMPOSITIONS THEREOF; PROPAGATING, PRESERVING, OR MAINTAINING MICROORGANISMS; MUTATION OR GENETIC ENGINEERING; CULTURE MEDIA
- C12N9/00—Enzymes; Proenzymes; Compositions thereof; Processes for preparing, activating, inhibiting, separating or purifying enzymes
- C12N9/14—Hydrolases (3)
- C12N9/16—Hydrolases (3) acting on ester bonds (3.1)
- C12N9/22—Ribonucleases RNAses, DNAses
-
- C—CHEMISTRY; METALLURGY
- C12—BIOCHEMISTRY; BEER; SPIRITS; WINE; VINEGAR; MICROBIOLOGY; ENZYMOLOGY; MUTATION OR GENETIC ENGINEERING
- C12N—MICROORGANISMS OR ENZYMES; COMPOSITIONS THEREOF; PROPAGATING, PRESERVING, OR MAINTAINING MICROORGANISMS; MUTATION OR GENETIC ENGINEERING; CULTURE MEDIA
- C12N15/00—Mutation or genetic engineering; DNA or RNA concerning genetic engineering, vectors, e.g. plasmids, or their isolation, preparation or purification; Use of hosts therefor
- C12N15/09—Recombinant DNA-technology
- C12N15/63—Introduction of foreign genetic material using vectors; Vectors; Use of hosts therefor; Regulation of expression
- C12N15/70—Vectors or expression systems specially adapted for E. coli
Definitions
- GEMs genetically engineered microorganisms
- the planned and the already performed applications of GEMs in agriculture, waste treatment, and production of certain raw materials rely on the release of great quantities of cells into the environment.
- a main concern about releases of transgenic organisms comes from the uncertainty on how these organisms will behave in the environment (30) .
- One aspect of this is the risk of unanticipated survival and reproduction in the environment with negative ecological effects.
- Another problem is seen in the uncontrolled transfer of the genetically engineered DNA to other organisms in the environment.
- conditional suicide systems for bacteria have been designed and constructed which cause the controlled death of the cells (for review see reference 20) .
- Such suicide systems consist of a regulated killing gene which is expressed in response to specific factors in the environment or in closed systems.
- the killing genes so far successfully used in suicide systems determined the synthesis of cell-lysing agents including membrane- destabilizing polypeptides (7, 14, 19), cell-destroying levane (23) and lysozyme (27) .
- the genes were put under the control of promoters inducible by e.g.
- An object of the invention is to provide a conditional suicide system by which cell death is accompanied by a degradation of intracellular DNA to acid soluble material.
- the invention provides conditional suicide cells of Escherichia coli genetically engineered and comprising
- nuclease gene which can be expressed in the cells by means of said promoter
- the invention provides cells according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the cells can express altogether two or more nuclease genes.
- the invention provides conditional suicide cells according to any of the preceeding claims, characterized by the gene for the nuclease of Serra tia marcescens deleted for the leader-coding sequence as said nuclease gene, where the nuclease gene is that of the wild type or a variant thereof which still kills cells of Escherichia coli and degrades intracellularly their DNA.
- conditional suicide cells according to any of the preceeding claims, characterized by the lambda P L -promoter and/or the temperature sensitive repressor of phage lambda.
- the invention provides plasmid pAH12 as plasmid according to claim 1(a) or claim 2(a), obtainable from plasmid pNuc by
- step (b) cutting out the nuc gene together with the ribosome binding site and/or the T7PhilO promoter and the start codon from the plasmid resulting from step (a) and inserting said fragment downstream of the P L promoter of plasmid pSFl (after deletion of the ssb gene) and
- F IG Construction of the containment plasmid pAH12 (for details refer to 'Results') .
- nucleotide sequence of the leader peptide nuc coding sequence for the mature Serratia nuclease
- ⁇ lO T7 ⁇ lO promoter
- P L lambda L promoter
- FIG. 2 Survival of E. coli TGE900 with the suicide plasmid pAH12 ( ⁇ ) or the vector pSFlE ( ⁇ ) after thermoinduction by incubation at 42 °C (0 to 40 min) . Viable counts were determined as described in 'Materials and Methods'.
- the survival (N/NQ) is the viable count of the culture at the indicated times (N) divide -L by the viable count of the culture before induction (N Q ) .
- the data are means of two (pSFlE) or three (pAH12) independent experiments.
- FIG. 3 Intracellular DNA degradation in E. coli TGE900 pAH12 following thermoinduction by incubation at 42 °C (0 to 30 miri) .
- the cells were labeled with [ 3 H]thymidine at 28 °C and treated as described in 'Materials and Methods'.
- the TCA-insoluble radioactive material was determined in the thermoinduced culture ( ⁇ ) , in the culture thermoinduced in the presence of Cm (V) and in the culture kept at 28 °C throughout (O) .
- Bacterial strains and plas ids Table 1 contains the description of bacterial strains and plasmids used in this study.
- Escherichia coli AH1 was constructed by Pl transduction (18) using E. coli JC10289 pKY102 as donor of the recA deletion (12) .
- Plasmid DNA was isolated by alkaline lysis (6) for treatment with restriction endonucleases and for transformations.
- Serratia nuclease the extracellular nuclease of S. marcescens (in the following termed Serratia nuclease) during plasmid preparation the method of Birnboim and Doly (6) was modified. Before lysis the cells were washed in 0.5 ml 10 mM NaCl to remove extracellular nuclease. During the alkaline lysis incubation times were shortened to 5 min and all centrifugations were done at 4 °C.
- the pellet was resuspended in 50 ⁇ l 10 mM Tris-HCl, pH 8.0, 100 mM EDTA, pH ⁇ 8.0. After addition of 25 ⁇ l 7.5 M NH 4 -acetate, pH 7.5 the mixture was incubated for 15 min at 70°C, for 10 min on ice and then centrifuged (12 min, 13.000 x g, 4°C) . The supernatant was extracted twice with phenol/chloroform/isoamylalcohol (25:24:1), once with chloroform/isoamylalcohol (24:1) and precipitated with ethanol.
- the pellet was washed with ice-cold 70 % ethanol, dried and resuspended in 10 ⁇ l TE (10 mM Tris- HCl, pH 8.0, 1 mM EDTA pH 8.0) .
- 10 ⁇ l TE 10 mM Tris- HCl, pH 8.0, 1 mM EDTA pH 8.0
- the plasmid DNA was isolated with the Qiaprep-spin plasmid kit (Diagen, D ⁇ sseldorf, Germany) and extracted twice with phenol/chloroform/isoamylalcohol as described above.
- E. coli was transformed by electroporation (Gene pul ⁇ er, Bio-Rad, Kunststoff, Germany; 25 ⁇ F, 12.5 kV cm - *1 , 200 Ohm)'.
- DNA Intracellular DNA degradation.
- DNA was labeled by growth of the cells in LB broth plus Ap (100 ⁇ g ml "1 ), 2'deoxyadenosine (250 ⁇ g ml -1 ) and [methyl- 3 H] thymidine (1.5 x 10 5 Bq ml" 1 ) for three generations at 28 °C.
- Ap 100 ⁇ g ml "1
- 2'deoxyadenosine 250 ⁇ g ml -1
- [methyl- 3 H] thymidine 1.5 x 10 5 Bq ml" 1
- the nuc gene coding for the Serratia nuclease determines a polypeptide of 266 amino acids of which the N-terminal 21 amino acids constitute a leader peptide (5) .
- the leader peptide is removed during secretion which activates the mature nuclease (2, 5) .
- the construction of a containment plasmid (pAH12) is described in Fig. 1.
- the plasmid contains the nuclease gene of S. marcescens deleted for the leader-coding sequence under the control of the lambda L promoter.
- E. coli TGE900 (8) which carries the gene for the thermosensitive lambda cI857 repressor in the chromosome the expression of the truncated gene for the leader- free Serratia nuclease is controlled by temperature.
- the DNA fragment coding for the mature Serratia nuclease was cut out from the plasmid pNuc4 (2) by digestion with Eagl and BssHII. After mung bean nuclease digestion the fragment was joined to a start codon in the vector pET81F + (29) .
- pET81F + was prepared for cloning by digestion with Ncol and BamHI and filling in of the resulting single-stranded ends of the vector with the Klenow fragment of DNA polymerase I of E. coli .
- the resulting plasmid was termed pAHIO (Fig. 1) .
- the truncated nuclease gene together with the ribosome-binding site and the start codon of p ⁇ T81F + was cloned downstream of the lambda P L promoter of the pBR322 derived plasmid pSFl (4) by blunt end ligation.
- pAHIO was digested with S ⁇ pl , BamHI and mung bean nuclease and pSFl with EcoRI and mung bean nuclease.
- the ligation mixture was transformed into E. coli TGE900.
- thermoinduction of TGE900 with the vector pSFlE did not substantially affect growth during the 30 min induction period compared to the 28 °C culture.
- the vector contained the ⁇ sb gene of E. coli coding for single-stranded DNA binding protein, the thermoinducted overproduction of this protein did not cause killing either.
- E. coli TGE900 was transformed with plasmid DNA isolated from the four clones.
- the transformant ⁇ showed the same growth in streak ⁇ on LB agar with Ap at 42 °C as the original surviving clones, suggesting that chromosomal mutations were not responsible for the survival of the clone ⁇ .
- Gel electrophoretic analysis of the DNA of the four plasmid clones showed the same plasmid size as that of the wildtype plasmid pAH12.
- Intracellular DNA degradation The extracellular Serratia nuclease is an endonuclease and degrades high molecular weight DNA to acid soluble material (21) . Previous studies had revealed that the nuclease introduces single- and double-strand breaks into duplex DNA which eventually leads to the breakdown of DNA into oligo- and mononucleotides (1) .
- the cellular DNA was labeled with [ 3 H] thymidine and the fraction of T CA -insoluble radioactivity was determined after various incubation times. Following induction for 30 min at 42 °C DNA was degraded to acid soluble material for at least 2.5 h during which cell lysis did not occur. The data show that the Serratia nuclease without the leader peptide is active ih the cytoplasm of the cells. DNA degradation (and possibly RNA degradation) continued over a period of at least 3 h after derepression of the truncated nuc gene leading to the conversion of over 80 % of cellular DNA to acid soluble material. In cells grown at 28 °C all the time or thermoinduced at 42 °C with simultaneous addition of Cm (100 ⁇ g ml" 1 ) , there was little if any DNA degradation.
- the suicide system presented here consists of the truncated nuc gene of Serratia marcescens (deletion of the sequence for a leader peptide) coding for a powerful DNase and' RNase cloned downstream of the lambda P L promoter and controlled by the thermosensitive lambda cI857 repressor.
- cell killing correlated with DNA degradation, i.e. thermoinduction (30 min 42 °C) led to a minimum of cell survival and to extensive intracellular DNA breakdown.
- thermoinduction (30 min 42 °C) led to a minimum of cell survival and to extensive intracellular DNA breakdown.
- the expression of the nuclease gene is limited to the period before the coding sequences are destroyed by the enzyme.
- the amount of enzyme produced following induction suffices possibly together with other cellular DNases to degrade the majority of intracellular DNA in the culture to acid soluble material within 3 h.
- the intracellular milieu apparently does not only provide favorable conditions for the activity of the enzyme but also may contribute to the stability of the enzyme by providing a high concentration of proteins which was shown to stimulate the nuclease activity towards RNA and DNA in vitro and to stabilize the purified enzyme against thermal inactivation (1) .
- the intracellular activity of the enzyme is notable, because the Serratia nuclease has two disulfide bonds, which are essential for the activity of the extracellular enzyme (3) , and the formation of which could be inhibited under the prevailing redox conditions in the intracellular milieu.
- the efficiency of killing by the system (2 x 10 "5 ) is similar to or better than that of previously published' suicide systems not involving a nuclease. For example, efficiencies of 5 x 10 "2 (26), 10" 3 (23), 10" 5 to 10 "6 (7, 13) and 10 "8 by using two copies of the killing gene (13) were described. The fact that out of 25 examined survivors of a thermoinduction most were as sensitive as the initial strain and the rest was still highly sensitive suggests that the efficiency of the system is not very prone to mutational escape events. Knudsen and Karlstr ⁇ m (14) described a suicide system based on the relF gene of E. coli controlled by various lac promoters localized on plasmids.
- the nucleolytic killing of cells is as ⁇ umed to prevent horizontal gene tran ⁇ fer effectively.
- Cell ⁇ with degraded DNA cannot function a ⁇ donors in conjugation, tran ⁇ duction or transformation. Since cell lysi ⁇ did not occur following induction of killing, even large DNA fragments produced during initial ⁇ tage ⁇ of DNA degradation do not normally enter the environment where tran ⁇ formation of other cell ⁇ could occur. A l so, it seems unlikely that cells containing DNa ⁇ e (and degraded DNA) will pre ⁇ erve foreign DNA when acting as recipient.
- the suicide system based on the controlled expression of a nucleotide sequence-independent nuclease can be' adopted for a variety of applications.
- the nuclease killing gene could be put under the control of other regulators more relevant to the environment, such as those responding to starvation for specific substances.
- the physiologically induced suicide of cells could substitute for killing by addition of chemicals.
- cell lysis does not accompany killing, during industrial production of substances by GEMs the cell entity is preserved while the mass of DNA (and possibly RNA) is degraded leading to reduced efforts needed to remove nucleic acids from the product.
- a chemical induction of the truncated nuclease gene expression could be desirable (such as IPTG) if high temperature regimes would have to be avoided due to a thermal sen ⁇ itivity of the product.
- E. coli W TGE900 A(recA-srl) 306::Tn10, Tc R This work pET81F + Ap R , 2730 bp; expression vector with the 29
- N/N Q The ⁇ urvival (N/N Q ) is the viable count of the culture at the indicated times (N) divided by the viable count of the culture before induction (N 0 ; for details, refer to 'Materials and Methods') .
- the data are means of two independent experiments. TABLE 3. Thermoinduced killing of E. coli TGE900 pAH12 clone ⁇ which had survived a 42 °C treatment 3
Abstract
Description
Claims
Priority Applications (1)
Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
---|---|---|---|
EP95923293A EP0717775A1 (en) | 1994-06-10 | 1995-06-09 | Conditional suicide cells of e. coli etc. |
Applications Claiming Priority (4)
Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
---|---|---|---|
EP94108958 | 1994-06-10 | ||
EP94108958 | 1994-06-10 | ||
PCT/EP1995/002245 WO1995034643A1 (en) | 1994-06-10 | 1995-06-09 | Conditional suicide cells of e. coli etc. |
EP95923293A EP0717775A1 (en) | 1994-06-10 | 1995-06-09 | Conditional suicide cells of e. coli etc. |
Publications (1)
Publication Number | Publication Date |
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EP0717775A1 true EP0717775A1 (en) | 1996-06-26 |
Family
ID=8216010
Family Applications (1)
Application Number | Title | Priority Date | Filing Date |
---|---|---|---|
EP95923293A Withdrawn EP0717775A1 (en) | 1994-06-10 | 1995-06-09 | Conditional suicide cells of e. coli etc. |
Country Status (2)
Country | Link |
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EP (1) | EP0717775A1 (en) |
WO (1) | WO1995034643A1 (en) |
Families Citing this family (4)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
DE19633698A1 (en) | 1996-08-21 | 1998-02-26 | Lubitz Werner Prof Dr | New systems for regulating gene expression |
AUPP021597A0 (en) * | 1997-11-06 | 1997-11-27 | Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation | Suicide expression vector for use in vaccine strains |
DE69938127T2 (en) * | 1998-03-30 | 2008-07-24 | Metabolix, Inc., Cambridge | MICROBIAL STRAINS AND METHOD FOR THE PRODUCTION OF BIOMATERIALS |
DE10160600A1 (en) * | 2001-12-10 | 2003-06-26 | Gl Biotech Gmbh | New vector for cloning by positive selection of clones containing DNA inserts, comprises a nuclease sequence that kills cells unless inactivated by insertion of a coding sequence |
Family Cites Families (3)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
AU7232087A (en) * | 1986-03-26 | 1987-10-20 | Genexpress Aps | Biological containment |
JPS6399020A (en) * | 1986-06-05 | 1988-04-30 | ベイラ− カレツジ オブ メデイシン | Vaccine and manufacture |
US5300431A (en) * | 1991-02-26 | 1994-04-05 | E. I. Du Pont De Nemours And Company | Positive selection vector for the bacteriophage P1 cloning system |
-
1995
- 1995-06-09 WO PCT/EP1995/002245 patent/WO1995034643A1/en not_active Application Discontinuation
- 1995-06-09 EP EP95923293A patent/EP0717775A1/en not_active Withdrawn
Non-Patent Citations (1)
Title |
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See references of WO9534643A1 * |
Also Published As
Publication number | Publication date |
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WO1995034643A1 (en) | 1995-12-21 |
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Inventor name: JEKEL, MANFRED Inventor name: AHRENHOLTZ, INGRID Inventor name: LORENZ, MICHAEL G. Inventor name: WACKERNAGEL, WILFRIED |
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