JP4053572B2 - Cold-inducible expression promoter and cold-inducible expression vector containing such a promoter - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a vector used in a gene recombination technique, and a protein expression method using the vector.

  Production of useful proteins using genetic recombination techniques is a widely used technique today. Among them, an expression system using Escherichia coli as a host is the most commonly used expression system, and many proteins have been produced by recombinants. In order to produce useful proteins using these recombinants, it is common to construct and use a so-called expression vector in which a target gene is placed under the control of a promoter recognized by RNA polymerase. As an example of the promoter used in the expression vector, for example, when Escherichia coli is used as a host, promoters such as lac, trp, tac, gal, and ara are used. Further, as an expression vector using a promoter other than those directly recognized by these E. coli RNA polymerases, a pET-system (Novagen) using a promoter recognized by bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase that infects E. coli. [Journal of Molecular Biology (J. Mol. Biol.), 189, 113-130 (1986), Gene, 56, 125-135 (1987)] . In the case of the pET-system, T7 RNA polymerase is expressed in E. coli, the target gene located downstream of the T7 promoter on the expression vector is transcribed by this T7 RNA polymerase, and the target protein is synthesized by the host translation system. Is called.

  However, when the target protein is expressed at a high level in many E. coli expression systems including the pET-system, the target protein becomes an insoluble complex, so-called inclusion body, and the amount of the active target protein becomes very low. There are many cases. For some polypeptides, there have been reports of examples where active bodies were obtained by solubilizing inclusion bodies and then refolding, but in general, the amount recovered was often low. It is necessary to examine appropriate refolding conditions for each protein. Therefore, a system for directly expressing an active protein in E. coli has been demanded.

  The formation of inclusion bodies is due to intermolecular interactions that intertwine with other polypeptide chains through intermolecular interactions at the intermediate stage before the translated polypeptide chain folds into the correct conformation, resulting in a huge insoluble complex. It is believed that. In such a case, it is known that the expression level of the active protein increases when the recombinant Escherichia coli is cultured at a temperature lower than the commonly used temperature of 37 ° C. (20-30 ° C.). This is because the rate of translation by the ribosome is slowed, so that the intermediate has time to fold into the correct structure, and the activity of intracellular proteolytic enzymes is slowed under low-temperature conditions. This is presumed to increase the stability of the type protein. As described above, a method of culturing recombinant E. coli under low temperature conditions has attracted attention as an effective method for the production of a protein serving as an inclusion body.

  On the other hand, when the culture temperature of Escherichia coli in the logarithmic growth phase is lowered from 37 ° C. to 10 to 20 ° C., the growth of Escherichia coli is temporarily stopped, during which time the expression of a group of proteins called cold shock proteins is induced. The proteins are classified into group I (10 times or more) and group II (less than 10 times) according to the induction level, and examples of the proteins of group I include CspA, CspB, CspG, and CsdA. Among them, since CspA reaches an expression level of 13% of the whole cell protein 1.5 hours after the temperature shift from 37 ° C. to 10 ° C. [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA ( Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA), 87, 283-287 (1990)], it has been attempted to use the promoter of the cspA gene for the production of recombinant proteins at low temperatures.

The recombinant protein expression system using the cspA gene under low temperature conditions has the following effectiveness in addition to the fact that the promoter of the gene initiates transcription efficiently at low temperature as described above. .
(1) When the translatable mRNA transcribed from the cspA gene does not encode a functional CspA protein, more specifically, when it encodes only a part of the N-terminal sequence of the CspA protein Such mRNA inhibits the expression of other E. coli proteins including cold shock proteins for a long time, during which time translation of the mRNA is preferentially carried out [Journal of Bacteriology (J. Bacteriol.), 178. Vol. 4919-4925 (1996)].
(2) At a position 12 bases downstream from the start codon of the cspA gene, there is a sequence called a downstream box (downstream box) consisting of 15 bases, which increases translation efficiency under low temperature conditions.
(3) The 159 base untranslated region consisting of 159 bases from the transcription start point to the start codon of cspA gene mRNA negatively affects the expression of CspA at 37 ° C and positively at low temperatures. Yes.

  However, although the promoter of the gene can surely start transcription at low temperature and with high efficiency, it actually acts at the temperature (37 ° C.) used for normal culture, and transcription from the gene. It has been suggested that the stability of the mRNA regulated regulates the expression of the gene [Molecular Microbiology, Vol. 23, pp. 355-364 (1997)]. Therefore, in the case of a gene in which expression control is incomplete in an expression vector constructed using the promoter of the cspA gene and the product is harmful to the host, E. coli containing the expression vector is inducible. It may be difficult to culture or even an expression vector may not be constructed.

  For example, in US Pat. No. 5,654,169, even when a β-galactosidase gene generally used for evaluation of a promoter is inserted into an expression plasmid using the promoter of the cspA gene, the construct is retained in E. coli due to the influence of the expression product. It is stated that it is difficult to do.

  On the other hand, it is known that the transcription initiation ability of the promoter of the cspA gene is maintained in a region downstream from the position of −37 from the transcription initiation point, but the essential region has not been confirmed. In addition, in the above-mentioned U.S. Patent Specification, a region from -40 to +96 from the transcription start point of the gene is shown as a region essential for the function as a promoter of the cspA gene, but this region is transcribed into mRNA, In addition, the protein contains a region that does not encode nearly 100 bases. Thus, the minimal region of the cspA promoter that is required to achieve efficient transcription at low temperatures has not yet been clarified.

  Therefore, an object of the present invention is to express a gene even if it is difficult to construct an expression system or to efficiently produce a gene product by the conventional technique because the gene product is harmful to the host. It is an object of the present invention to provide a vector capable of producing a transformant of 1) and capable of expressing the gene product with high efficiency even under low temperature conditions.

In order to achieve such an object, the present inventors control the gene expression from the promoter during the construction of the plasmid and the culture to the inducible state by inserting a lac operator sequence downstream of the promoter of the cspA gene. Tried to do. By using an expression vector having a cspA promoter that can be regulated by the lac operator thus constructed, an endo-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-degrading enzyme (which could not be constructed by an expression vector using a cspA promoter having no lac operator sequence) ( The enzyme expression plasmid into which the gene encoding Fdase2) was inserted was successfully constructed. Furthermore, it was found that the enzyme can be induced and expressed by inactivating the lac operator during the culture of the transformant transformed with the plasmid and simultaneously reducing the culture temperature. This indicates that the introduction of an operator sequence made it possible to construct a low-temperature expression vector capable of controlling the expression at room temperature (37 ° C.).
Furthermore, the present inventors have determined the minimum necessary region of the cspA promoter that can maintain its function, and have completed the present invention.

The present invention will be summarized as follows. The first invention of the present invention relates to a vector and is characterized by containing the following elements:
(1) a promoter exhibiting its action in the host used,
(2) a regulatory region for regulating the action of the promoter of (1), and (3) a region encoding a 5 ′ untranslated region derived from cold shock protein gene mRNA, or at least one base in the untranslated region A region that encodes a region that has been substituted, deleted, inserted, or added.

A second invention of the present invention relates to a method for expressing a target protein, comprising the following steps:
(1) a step of transforming a host with the vector of the first invention of the present invention in which a gene encoding a target protein to be expressed is incorporated;
(2) a step of culturing the obtained transformant;
(3) A step of expressing the target protein by inducing the action of the promoter via the function of the regulatory region and lowering the culture temperature from the normal temperature.

  Furthermore, the third invention of the present invention relates to an isolated cspA promoter, characterized in that it comprises the base sequence shown in SEQ ID NO: 5 in the sequence listing and consists of a base sequence of 135 bases or less.

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION The present invention will be specifically described below.
The promoter of (1) of the first invention of the present invention is not particularly limited as long as it has an activity of initiating transcription to RNA in the host to be used. An arbitrary promoter can be used as a cold-responsive promoter by using it in combination with a region encoding the 5 ′ untranslated region derived from the cold shock protein gene mRNA of (3) above. When high transcription efficiency is desired at the time of induction of expression, promoters derived from the cold shock protein genes such as cspA, cspB, cspG, and csdA are suitable for the present invention, and promoters derived from the cspA gene are particularly suitable. .

  The regulatory region of (2) is not particularly limited as long as it can control the expression of a gene located downstream of the promoter of (1). For example, by introducing into a vector a region that transcribes RNA (antisense RNA) complementary to mRNA transcribed from the promoter, translation of the target protein from the gene downstream of the promoter can be inhibited. . By placing the transcription of the antisense RNA under the control of an appropriate promoter different from the promoter of (1), the expression of the target protein can be regulated. Moreover, you may utilize the operator which exists in the expression control area | region of various genes. For example, a lac operator derived from the E. coli lactose operon can be used in the present invention. The lac operator can be deactivated by the use of a suitable inducer, such as lactose or its structural analogs, particularly preferably isopropyl-β-D-thiogalactoside (IPTG), to activate the promoter. Such an operator sequence is usually arranged in the vicinity of the transcription start point downstream of the promoter.

  The region encoding the 5 'untranslated region derived from the cold shock protein mRNA of (3) above is a region encoding a portion 5' from the start codon of mRNA. This region is characteristically found in the cold shock protein genes of E. coli (cspA, cspB, cspG, and csdA) [Journal of Bacteriology, Vol. 178, 4919-4925 (1996), Journal of Bacteriology, 178, pp. 2994-2997 (1996)], a portion of 100 or more bases from the 5 ′ end of mRNA transcribed from these genes is not translated into protein. This region is important for low-temperature responsiveness of gene expression, and by adding this 5′-untranslated region to the 5′-end of any protein mRNA, translation from the mRNA to the protein occurs under low-temperature conditions. become. This 5 'untranslated region derived from cold shock protein mRNA may be one in which one or more base substitutions, deletions, insertions or additions have been made to its base sequence within the range that retains its function.

  As used herein, “region” refers to a certain range on a nucleic acid (DNA or RNA). The “5 ′ untranslated region of mRNA” described in the present specification refers to a region that is present on the 5 ′ side of mRNA synthesized by transcription from DNA and does not encode a protein. . In the following specification, the region is referred to as “5′-UTR (5′-Untranslated Region)”. Unless otherwise specified, 5'-UTR refers to the mRNA of the Escherichia coli cspA gene or a 5 'untranslated region of a modified version thereof.

  As the vector of the present invention, the regions encoding 5'-UTRs derived from the cold shock protein genes listed above can be used, and those derived from the cspA gene can be particularly preferably used. Furthermore, the base sequence may be partially modified, for example, the base sequence of this region may be modified by introduction of the operator shown in (2) above. As shown in the Examples below, mRNA containing the nucleotide sequence shown in SEQ ID NO: 1 in the sequence listing, for example, the region encoding mRNA of the base sequence shown in SEQ ID NO: 2, 3 or 4 in the sequence listing, and these A region including a region encoding mRNA with a modified sequence can be used. The region encoding the 5'-UTR of this cold shock protein gene is located between the promoter of (1) and the start codon of the gene encoding the protein to be expressed, and an operator is introduced onto this region. May be. For example, the 5'-UTR of the nucleotide sequence shown in SEQ ID NOs: 2 to 4 in the sequence listing contains the lac operator sequence in the nucleotide sequence, and is effective for selective expression of the target protein at low temperature.

  In addition to the above components, the expression efficiency can be increased by containing a base sequence complementary to the anti-downstream box sequence of the ribosomal RNA of the host used in the downstream of the 5 'untranslated region. For example, in the case of Escherichia coli, an anti-downstream box sequence is present at the position 1467-1481 of 16S ribosomal RNA, and a region coding for the N-terminal peptide of a cold shock protein containing a base sequence highly complementary to this sequence is used. be able to. For example, the base sequence shown in SEQ ID NO: 28 in the sequence listing or a sequence having high homology to the sequence may be artificially introduced. It is effective that the sequence having complementarity with the anti-downstream box sequence is arranged so as to start from about 1 to 15 bases from the start codon. The gene encoding the target protein is incorporated into the vector so that the protein is expressed as a fusion protein with these N-terminal peptides, or the gene encoding the target protein is complementary to the anti-downstream box sequence. As can be seen, base substitutions are introduced by site-directed mutagenesis. When the target protein is incorporated into a vector so as to be expressed as a fusion protein, the peptide may be of any length as long as the target protein does not lose its activity. Such a fusion protein expression vector includes, for example, a peptide whose fusion portion has been devised so that the target protein can be isolated from the fusion protein by an appropriate protease, a peptide that can be used for purification or detection, and a fusion protein. It can be something that has been devised to be expressed. Furthermore, a vector in which a transcription termination sequence (terminator) is arranged downstream of the target protein gene is advantageous for high expression of the target protein because the stability of the vector is improved.

The vector of the present invention may be any commonly used vector, for example, a plasmid, a phage, or a virus, as long as it can achieve the purpose of the vector. In addition, the region other than the above-described components contained in the vector of the present invention includes, for example, an origin of replication, a drug resistance gene used as a selection marker, and a regulatory gene necessary for the function of the operator, such as a lac operator. lacI ^q gene, etc. In addition, the vector of the present invention may be integrated on its genomic DNA after being introduced into the host.

  For example, the expression of the target protein using the vector of the present invention constructed as a plasmid is carried out in the following steps. By cloning a gene encoding the protein of interest into the plasmid vector of the present invention and transforming a suitable host with the plasmid, a transformant for expressing the protein can be obtained. In such a transformant, the action of the promoter is suppressed by the operator, so that the protein is not expressed in a non-inducible state, and the vector is stable in the host even if the protein is harmful to the host. Retained.

  The above transformant is cultured at a normal culture temperature, for example, 37 ° C., in an uninduced state to increase the number of cells, and then the action of the operator is canceled to induce transcription to express the target protein. At this time, by lowering the culture temperature at the same time as the induction of transcription or simultaneously with the induction of transcription, the target protein having an activity can be obtained by suppressing the formation of the inclusion body.

  Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in more detail with reference to the construction of a specific plasmid vector. In the present specification, unless otherwise specified, the E. coli CspA protein is referred to as “CspA”, the region on the gene involved in the expression of the protein is referred to as “cspA gene”, and the promoter region of the gene is referred to as “cspA promoter”. . In addition, the base sequence of the natural cspA gene registered and published as accession number M30139 in the GenBank gene database is shown in SEQ ID NO: 6 in the sequence listing. Among the sequences, base numbers 426 to 430 and 448 to 453 are the core sequence of the promoter, base number 462 is the major transcription start point (+1), base numbers 609 to 611 are the SD sequence (ribosome binding sequence), base Numbers 621 to 623 and 832 to 834 are a start codon and a stop codon for CspA, respectively. Therefore, it is the portion of base numbers 462 to 620 that encodes 5'-UTR in the sequence.

  First, as expression plasmids using the cspA gene, plasmid vectors pMM031 series (pMM031 and pMM031F1) using the cspA gene as they are were constructed, construction of foreign gene expression plasmids in which foreign genes were introduced, and proteins using the plasmids Expression will be described.

  The detailed construction method of these expression plasmids is described in Example 1- (1). For example, in the plasmid pMM031, the region containing the lac promoter between the AflIII-EcoRI sites of the plasmid vector pTV118N (Takara Shuzo) containing the pUC-based plasmid replication origin, ampicillin resistance gene, etc. is the promoter region of the cspA gene, 5′-UTR. And a region encoding the N-terminal portion of CspA of 13 amino acid residues. In the plasmid pMM031F1, the codon encoding the 13th asparagine from the N-terminus of CspA is changed to that encoding lysine. The promoter region of the cspA gene used in these pMM031 series is a region after −67 counting from the transcription start point of the gene including a region essential for its function. In addition, the region encoding 13 amino acid residues of the N-terminal portion of CspA sufficiently includes a downstream box sequence responsible for high translation efficiency under low temperature conditions of the cspA gene. Therefore, the pMM031 series is an expression vector that can sufficiently reflect the high protein expression efficiency under low temperature conditions of the cspA gene.

  The fact that pMM031 series plasmids actually function as low-temperature-inducible expression vectors and that useful proteins can be expressed as active proteins is described in Example 1- (2) as Rous associated virus 2, RAV-2. The reverse transcriptase gene from the origin was confirmed as an example. However, when Escherichia coli transformed with the reverse transcriptase expression vector constructed using the pMM031 series is handled at 37 ° C., it is formed in comparison with a transformant of the pMM031 series plasmid that does not contain foreign genes. It was observed that the colonies were small and the growth rate of the fungus was slow. This suggests that when the cspA gene, particularly the promoter of the gene, is used, the expression control at 37 ° C. is insufficient and there is a problem in protein production.

  The inaccuracy of the expression control of the cspA gene at 37 ° C is so fatal that it becomes impossible to construct an expression plasmid when the protein to be expressed is more toxic to the host. It has been shown. As shown in Example 1- (3), when an attempt was made to construct an endo-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide degrading enzyme (Fdase2) expression plasmid using a plasmid vector of the pMM031 series, because of the toxicity of the expression product to the host Construction of the plasmid was not possible. The fact that expressed Fdase2 affects the host, making it impossible to construct an expression vector is due to deletion of one or two bases in the gene encoding the enzyme as a by-product during the construction operation. A plasmid in which the reading frame is shifted and the enzyme can no longer be expressed is easily inferred from the obtained plasmid. Further, regarding the toxicity of Fdase2 to host E. coli, after constructing the enzyme expression vector using the plasmid pET3d of the pET-system (manufactured by Novagen) introduced as a conventional technique, the host E. coli BL21 for expression having a T7 RNA polymerase gene is constructed. This is also indicated by the fact that no transformant is obtained when trying to transform (DE3).

  Therefore, the present inventors have developed a new practically effective expression vector based on these results, and have found the plasmid vector of the present invention.

  That is, the present inventors have developed a low-temperature expression plasmid vector pMM037 that can reduce the expression level in a non-inducible state (37 ° C.) and control the expression of the target protein. In pMM037, a 31-base sequence designed to form a functional lac operator is inserted in place of the region from +2 to +18 downstream of the transcription start point (+1) on pMM031F1 of the pMM031 series. , Has the same structure as pMM031F1. The 5'-UTR encoded on the plasmid vector pMM037, that is, the base sequence from the transcription start point to the base immediately before the CspA start codon is shown in SEQ ID NO: 2 in the sequence listing.

  The method for constructing this expression plasmid vector is described in Example 2- (1). That is, the primer CSA + 1RLAC (designated so that the functional lac operator is formed downstream of the cspA promoter and containing the sequence of the region upstream of the transcription start site of the cspA gene and the sequence of the lac operator) (Which shows the base sequence of the primer) can be synthesized. Using this primer phosphorylated at the 5 ′ end and primer CSA-67FN (the nucleotide sequence of the primer is shown in SEQ ID NO: 7 in the sequence listing) used for plasmid construction of the pMM031 series, the wild type cspA gene is included. By performing PCR using the plasmid pJJG02 [Journal of Bacteriology, Vol. 178, pp. 4919-4925 (1996)] as a template, a DNA fragment in which the lac operator region is arranged downstream of the cspA gene promoter can be obtained. . At this time, if a restriction enzyme recognition sequence is designed near the end of the primer to be used, such as the NcoI site on primer CSA-67FN and the NheI site on primer CSA + 1RLAC, it is convenient for subsequent construction and modification. The obtained DNA fragment can be digested with NcoI and then inserted between NcoI-SmaI of plasmid pTV118N (Takara Shuzo) to construct plasmid pMM034.

  The obtained pMM034 is cleaved at the NcoI site and the AflIII site on pTV118N, blunted with Klenow fragment, and self-ligated to construct a plasmid pMM035 from which the lac promoter derived from pTV118N is removed. .

  Next, a sequence encoding the 5 'untranslated region of cspA mRNA can be inserted downstream of the lac operator region of pMM035. That is, using pMM031F1 constructed as in Example 1- (1) as a template, using primer CSA + 20FN (SEQ ID NO: 12 in the sequence listing shows the base sequence of primer CSA + 20FN) and M13 primer M4 (manufactured by Takara Shuzo). PCR can be performed to obtain a DNA fragment containing the 19th base downstream from the transcription start site of the cspA gene to the multicloning site of pMM031F1. This DNA fragment was cleaved at the NheI site arranged on CSA + 20FN and the XbaI site on the multicloning site, and then inserted between NheI-XbaI of pMM035 obtained in the direction of regenerating each site, and pMM037 Can be built.

  The ability of the plasmid pMM037 thus obtained to control the expression of the target protein at room temperature (37 ° C.) and the effectiveness of the expression of the target protein at low temperature are determined by the gene encoding the target protein at the multicloning site derived from pTV118N on pMM037. Can be investigated.

  An expression plasmid having a gene encoding the above-described endo-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-degrading enzyme (Fdase2) cannot be constructed even with pMM031 series plasmid vectors having no operator. However, the plasmid pMFDA102, which is an expression plasmid constructed by inserting the gene into the plasmid vector pMM037 so as to have the same reading frame as the sequence encoding the N-terminal part of CspA, is not suitable for Escherichia coli, such as Escherichia coli. It is held stably in JM109. Thus, it is shown that the above plasmid vector has a substantially effective ability to control expression.

  Further, the obtained transformant is cultured at room temperature (37 ° C.), and when the turbidity suitable for induction is reached, the culture temperature is lowered to a low temperature, for example, 15 ° C. 1 mM isopropyl-β-D-thiogalactoside (hereinafter abbreviated as IPTG) is added, and the culture is continued for an appropriate time. For the cells obtained from this culture solution, the protein expressed therein is analyzed by SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), and the band of the fusion polypeptide is detected. The protein expression ability can be confirmed. Alternatively, if the obtained bacterial cell is subjected to ultrasonic treatment or the like to prepare a bacterial cell extract, and the physiological activity of the target protein contained in the bacterial cell extract is measured, the target protein expressed as an active form Can know the amount of. E. coli transformed with the plasmid pMFDA102 expressed an active Fdase2 protein by the induction procedure described above.

  In the construction of the above plasmid vector pMM037, the cspA promoter initiates transcription at low temperature, which is its original function, even though the lac operator was introduced immediately after the transcription start point of the cspA gene (position after +2). Retained activity. This shows that the cspA promoter retains its function in the region up to the transcription start point. Therefore, the function of the cspA promoter includes only the region from base position 425 to 461 in the region from the position of −37 to the transcription start point, that is, the base sequence of the natural cspA gene shown in SEQ ID NO: 6 in the sequence listing. Is essential. The base sequence of the essential region of this cspA promoter is shown in SEQ ID NO: 5 in the sequence listing.

  The plasmid vector pMM037 constructed as described above can be modified by introducing mutations such as base deletion, addition, insertion, substitution, and the like. Within the scope of the invention. Hereinafter, modifications of the vector of the present invention performed by the present inventors using pMM037 as a basic structure will be described.

  First, a deletion mutation can be introduced into a region encoding 5'-UTR. As described in Example 3- (1), a plasmid in which the SD sequence of the cspA gene is connected immediately after the lac operator region of pMM037, that is, encoded on pMM037 shown in SEQ ID NO: 2 in the sequence listing Among the 5′-UTRs thus obtained, a plasmid vector pMM036 can be constructed that encodes the deletion of the base number 33 to 161 portion. This pMM036 has the same structure as pMM037 except for a deletion mutation introduced into the sequence encoding 5'-UTR.

  Next, the length of the amino acid residue at the N-terminal portion of CspA fused to the protein to be expressed can be changed. As described in Example 3- (2), the region coding for the N-terminal portion of CspA on pMM037 is defined as the entire amino acid sequence coding region (70 amino acid residues) of CspA, followed by a multiple cloning site. Thus, a plasmid vector pMM038 in which the target gene is expressed as a fusion polypeptide with 70 amino acid residues of CspA can be constructed. This pMM038 has exactly the same structure as pMM037 except that it contains the full length of the sequence encoding CspA expressed as a fusion polypeptide.

  In addition, substitution mutations can be introduced into the sequence encoding 5'-UTR. As described in Example 3- (3), a 6-base substitution mutation was made in the region corresponding to +20 to +26 counted from the transcription start site of the natural cspA gene on the region encoding 5′-UTR on pMM037. The introduced plasmid vector pMM047 can be constructed. This pMM047 has the same structure as pMM037 except for the above-described substitution mutation. E. coli JM109 transformed with the plasmid vector pMM047 is named and displayed as Escherichia coli JM109 / pMM047, and the Institute of Biotechnology, Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, Ministry of International Trade and Industry from October 31, 1997 (original deposit date). (FERM P-16696, 1-3-3 Higashi 1-chome, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki, Japan) as FERM P-16696, and the accession number FERM BP-6523 at the Institute of Biotechnology, Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Date of request for transfer to international deposit: September 24, 1998). The 5'-UTR encoded in the plasmid vector pMM047, that is, the base sequence from the transcription start point to the base immediately before the CspA start codon is shown in SEQ ID NO: 3 in the sequence listing.

  Furthermore, two or more of these mutations can be introduced simultaneously. As described in Example 3- (4), a plasmid vector pMM048 in which a deletion mutation of 30 bases is further introduced into the sequence encoding the 5'-UTR of the plasmid pMM047 can be constructed. This pMM048 has the same 6-base substitution mutation as pMM047 and a region corresponding to +56 to +85 counted from the transcription start point of the natural cspA gene, that is, base numbers 70 to 80 in the base sequence shown in SEQ ID NO: 3 in the sequence listing. The structure is exactly the same as pMM037 except that the portion encoding 99 sequences is deleted. SEQ ID NO: 4 in the sequence listing shows the base sequence of 5'-UTR encoded by plasmid vector pMM048.

Since the above plasmid vectors pMM047 and pMM048 retain the ability to express proteins at low temperatures, the mutation introduced into the 5'-UTR derived from the cspA gene affects the function of these two plasmid constructs. Not shown. Therefore, the region on the 5′-UTR derived from the cspA gene essential for protein expression at low temperature is a region of +27 to +55 and +86 to +159 counted from the transcription start point of the natural cspA gene encoded by the plasmid pMM048. It is shown. The base sequence of this region is shown in SEQ ID NO: 1 in the sequence listing.
The ability of the modified plasmid vectors pMM036, pMM038, pMM047, and pMM048 constructed as described above to control the expression of the target protein at room temperature (37 ° C.) and the expression ability of the target protein at a low temperature are, for example, expressed. Evaluation can be performed using a β-galactosidase gene (lacZ gene) often used for evaluating the expression ability of vectors.

  That is, as described in Example 3- (5), plasmid pKM005 (1983, published by New York Academic Press, edited by Masanobu Inoue, Experimental Manipulation of Gene Expression, pages 15-32. Is inserted into the plasmid vector pMM037 and its modified plasmid, so that the N-terminal 12 amino acid residues of CspA and the 10 amino acid residues derived from the multicloning site are β- A fused β-galactosidase expression vector linked at the 10th amino acid residue of galactosidase can be constructed. In the case of pMM038, it encodes a fused β-galactosidase in which the N-terminal 70 amino acid residues of CspA and the 9 amino acid residues derived from the multiple cloning site are linked at the 10th amino acid residue of β-galactosidase. The obtained plasmids containing the lacZ gene are designated as plasmids pMM037lac, pMM036lac, pMM038lac, pMM047lac, and pMM048lac, respectively.

  E. coli JM109 transformed with each plasmid is cultured at room temperature (37 ° C.), and when turbidity suitable for induction is reached, the culture temperature is lowered to a low temperature, for example, 15 ° C. For example, after adding IPTG having a final concentration of 1 mM and continuing cultivation for an appropriate time, the protein expression ability at low temperatures can be compared by measuring β-galactosidase activity in the obtained culture solution. Moreover, if the microbial cell immediately before induction is used, the expression level in the non-induction state at 37 ° C. can also be compared.

  The β-galactosidase activity was measured in 1972 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. H. It can be measured by the method described in pages 352 to 355 by Miller (Experiments in Molecular Genetics).

  As shown in Table 1, β-galactosidase activity at 37 ° C. in E. coli transformed with any plasmid was almost the same level as that of pTV118Nlac in which the lacZ gene was introduced downstream of the lac promoter used as a control. It can be seen that the expression is effectively controlled. The β-galactosidase activity at 37 ° C. detected at this time is the lactose mixed in the LB medium (tripton 1%, yeast extract 0.5%, NaCl 0.5%, pH 7.0) used for the culture. This is a level where some guidance is performed.

  On the other hand, in E. coli transformed with any plasmid, β-galactosidase activity was increased by a temperature shift to 15 ° C. and addition of an inducer. This indicates that each plasmid has the ability to highly express the target protein at low temperature. In addition, regarding the plasmid pMM036 from which most of the 5'-UTR derived from cspA gene mRNA was deleted, the expression level of β-galactosidase is lower than that of other plasmids.

  Moreover, the results obtained for pMM047lac and pMM048lac show that the mutation introduced into the 5′-UTR of mRNA encoded by these plasmids does not adversely affect protein expression at low temperature, ie, SEQ ID NO: 1 in the sequence listing. The region in which these mutations having the nucleotide sequence are not introduced is essential for its function.

  Furthermore, the β-galactosidase expression level at each temperature of the transformants transformed with these plasmids was examined. As a result, the plasmids pMM038lac, pMM037lac, and pMM047lac were all controlled at a low temperature such as 10 ° C or 15 ° C. The expression level was higher than that of pTV118Nlac, the expression level at the same level at 20 ° C., and the lower expression level at 37 ° C. This indicates that the 5′-UTR of mRNA encoded by these plasmids is effective for protein expression mainly at a low temperature of 15 ° C. or lower. On the other hand, the plasmid pMM048lac showed a high expression level with pTV118Nlac at a low temperature of 20 ° C. or less, and an equivalent expression level at 37 ° C. This indicates that, as a result of the mutation introduced into pMM048, the plasmid acquired a high protein expression ability at both room temperature and low temperature.

  On the other hand, it is natural that the vector of the present invention can have various functions in regions other than the components of the present invention. For example, the vector of the present invention can include a multicloning site substantially free of a stop codon, a transcription terminator for stabilizing a plasmid, and the like. As described in Example 4, a sequence containing the start codon of the cspA gene is converted to an NcoI site or an NdeI site, and the multicloning site following the region encoding the N-terminus of CspA is substantially free of a stop codon. It has a sequence in which a stop codon appears in any of the three reading frames downstream, and further contains a transcription terminator region derived from the cspA gene, and the reading frames differ one by one on the multicloning site. Series vectors can be constructed. Plasmids having pMM047 as a basic skeleton are named pCold01NC series (including NcoI site) or pCold01ND series (including NdeI site) plasmids, and plasmids having pMM048 as a basic skeleton are named pCold02NC series or pCold02ND series plasmids. As described above, a series plasmid having a multicloning site which does not substantially contain a stop codon and has a different reading frame by one can easily insert a foreign gene and can easily construct an expression vector.

  It can be evaluated using the lacZ gene that these pCold01 series and pCold02 series plasmids have the same expression ability as the plasmid pMM047 or pMM048, which is the basic skeleton. As shown in Table 5, the E. coli transformed with the plasmid having the lacZ gene inserted into the above plasmid is the same β-galactosidase expression pattern as the E. coli transformed with pMM047lac or pMM048lac shown in Table 1, respectively. This shows that the above plasmids have the same expression ability as the plasmids pMM047 or pMM048.

Since all the vectors of the present invention specifically exemplified so far use a lac operator as an operator, a lac repressor high-expressing strain E. coli (lacI ^q strain), for example, can be used as a host when gene expression is intended. It is necessary to use E. coli JM109. Other operators can be used for the vector of the present invention, and in this case, naturally, a control method suitable for the operator is used. As is obvious to those skilled in the art, even when a lac operator is used as in the above pCold series plasmid, by introducing a lac repressor gene (lacI gene) onto this plasmid, Limits can be removed.

For example, as described in Example 5, pCold03 series and pCold04 series plasmids containing the lacI gene can be constructed. These plasmids have the same structures as the pCold01 series and pCold02 series plasmids, respectively, except for having the lacI gene. Similarly, plasmids using the lacI ^q gene, which is a lac repressor high expression gene, instead of the lacI gene, such as pCold05 series and pCold06 series plasmids, can be constructed.

The ability of the plasmid containing the lacI gene or the lacI ^q gene constructed as described above to control the expression of the target protein and the expression ability of the target protein at low temperatures are determined by inserting the lacZ gene into these plasmids. Can be easily evaluated by using Escherichia coli DH5α having no E as a host. Table 6 shows the effects of the lacI and lacI ^q genes. In the non-inducible state of 37 ° C., pCold01NC2lac having no lacI gene is not sufficiently controlled for expression, and high β-galactosidase activity is observed. In the case of pCold02 (a derivative of pMM048) having higher expression ability than pCold01 at 37 ° C., a transformant cannot be obtained using E. coli DH5α as a host. In contrast, pCold03NC2lac and pCold04NC2lac having the lacI gene are effectively controlled for expression at 37 ° C., and pCold05NC2lac and pCold06NC2lac containing the lacI ^q gene are more effectively suppressed and effectively controlled. You can see that In addition, with respect to these plasmids, virtually no change was observed in the expression ability of the target protein in the induced state. Therefore, by introducing the lacI gene or the lacI ^q gene into the vector of the present invention containing the lac operator as a constituent element, it is shown that there is no restriction on the host depending on the presence or absence of the lac repressor.

  In order to improve the expression efficiency of the target gene, a base sequence (downstream box sequence) having high complementarity to the anti-downstream box sequence present in 16S ribosomal RNA may be introduced into the vector of the present invention. it can. The downstream box sequence present in the region encoding the N-terminal part of E. coli CspA has only 67% complementarity to the anti-downstream box sequence described above. By making this a base sequence having higher complementarity, preferably 80% or more, it becomes possible to express a gene connected downstream thereof with higher efficiency.

  Furthermore, the vector of the present invention can be used to encode a base sequence encoding a tag sequence, which is a peptide for facilitating the purification of an expressed target gene product, A base sequence encoding a protease recognition amino acid sequence used for removal can be introduced.

  As a tag sequence for purification, a histidine tag consisting of several histidine residues, a maltose binding protein, glutathione-S-transferase and the like can be used. Proteins with a histidine tag can be easily purified using a chelating column, and other tag sequences can be easily purified by using ligands having specific affinity for them. Can do. Further, factor Xa, thrombin, enterokinase and the like can be used as proteases used for removing excess peptides, and bases encoding amino acid sequences that are specifically cleaved by these proteases in the vectors of the present invention. An array may be introduced.

For example, in Example 6, a downstream box sequence completely complementary to an anti-downstream sequence present in 16S ribosomal RNA, a histidine tag consisting of 6 histidine residues, and a base encoding the recognition amino acid sequence of Factor Xa Plasmids (pCold07 series and pCold08 series) into which sequences have been introduced are described. By evaluating the protein expression ability of the plasmid using the lacZ gene, it is shown that the β-galactosidase activity expressed is significantly increased compared to a plasmid having a downstream box sequence with low complementarity. Moreover, although the expression level of β-galactosidase before induction increases somewhat, this is an acceptable level and can be effectively suppressed by changing the lacI gene on these plasmids to lacI ^q gene as described above. .

  When the pCold07 series or the pCold08 series is used, the target protein is expressed as a fusion protein with a peptide encoded by the downstream box sequence, a histidine tag, and a leader peptide containing the recognition amino acid sequence of factor Xa. Since this fusion protein contains a histidine tag, it can be purified in one step using a chelating column. Next, by treating the protein with Factor Xa, the leader peptide is cleaved from the target protein, and then passed through the chelating column again, whereby only the target protein from which the leader peptide has been removed can be obtained.

  The present invention will be described more specifically with reference to the following examples. However, the present invention is not limited to the following examples.

  Among the operations described in this specification, basic operations such as plasmid preparation and restriction enzyme digestion are described in 1989, issued by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Edited by T. Maniatis et al., Molecular Cloning: According to the method described in A Laboratory Manual Second Edition (Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual 2nd ed.). Furthermore, for the construction of the plasmids shown below, LB medium containing 100 μg / ml ampicillin (tryptone 1%, yeast extract 0.5%, NaCl 0.5%, pH 7 unless otherwise specified) is used. 0.0) or LB plate which was solidified by adding 1.5% agar to LB medium and aerobically cultured at 37 ° C.

Example 1. Construction of pMM031 series low-temperature induction vector and examination of inducibility (1) Construction of plasmid vectors pMM031 and pMM031F1 Plasmid pJJG02 [Journal of Bacteriology, Vol. 178, 4919-4925 (1996)] containing cspA gene as a template PCR was performed using synthetic primers CSA-67FN and CSA13R (the base sequences of primers CSA-67FN and CSA13R are shown in SEQ ID NOs: 7 and 8, respectively), and the 13th amino acid residue from the cspA gene promoter was determined. A DNA fragment including the coding region was obtained. This DNA fragment was cleaved at the NcoI and EcoRI sites arranged on each of the above primers, and then inserted between NcoI and EcoRI of plasmid pTV118N (Takara Shuzo) to construct plasmid pMM030. Next, the plasmid was digested with NcoI (Takara Shuzo) and AflIII (NEB), and the ends were blunted using Klenow fragment (Takara Shuzo), followed by self-ligation to obtain the lac promoter derived from pTV118N. Plasmid pMM031 was obtained except for. Plasmid pMM031 contains pTV118N downstream of the promoter region of the cspA gene (67 bases), 5 ′ untranslated region (159 bases), and the region encoding the 13th amino acid residue from the N-terminal of CspA (39 bases). This is a plasmid vector having a multiple cloning site of EcoRI-HindIII derived from the origin.

  Next, in order to shift the reading frame starting from the start codon of the cspA gene on pMM031, the 3 ′ end of the region encoding the N-terminal part of CspA inserted into pMM031 was deleted by one base. Plasmid vector pMM031F1 was constructed. Plasmid pMM031F1 was constructed in exactly the same manner as pMM031 except that primer CSA13R2 (SEQ ID NO: 9 shows the base sequence of primer CSA13R2) was used instead of primer CSA13R. Therefore, this plasmid is the same as pMM031 except that the 3 'end of the coding region of the N-terminal region of CspA on pMM031 is one base less. By this single base deletion, the 13th amino acid residue from the N-terminus of CspA encoded by the plasmid pMM031F1 is replaced by asparagine to lysine.

(2) Examination of inducibility of pMM031 series cold induction vector using gene encoding reverse transcriptase derived from Rous associated virus (RAV-2) Escherichia described in JP-A-7-39378 Plasmid pT8RAV containing a gene encoding a reverse transcriptase derived from Rous associated virus 2, RAV-2 was prepared from E. coli JM109 / pT8RAV (FERM P-13716). The plasmid was digested with EcoRI and SalI (both manufactured by Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd.) to obtain a DNA fragment containing the gene encoding the above reverse transcriptase and a transcription termination sequence downstream thereof. This DNA fragment was inserted between EcoRI-SalI of pMM031F1 obtained in (1) to construct plasmid pMM031RAV.

  E. coli JM109 (Takara Shuzo) was transformed with pMM031RAV and pMM031, and colonies of the respective transformants were formed on LB plates containing 100 μg / ml ampicillin. The colonies were clearly observed to be smaller than the colonies of transformants with pMM031. Next, each of the obtained transformants was inoculated into LB medium containing 100 μg / ml ampicillin and cultured at 37 ° C. aerobically overnight. Inoculate 1% of each of these cultures in 5ml of the same medium and aerobically culture at 37 ° C. When the turbidity reaches OD600 = 0.6, Was further cultured for 20 hours. During this culturing, the culture time to reach the induced turbidity of the transformant by pMM031RAV was about twice that of the transformant by pMM031. After completion of the culture, the culture solution was centrifuged to collect the cells and analyzed by SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. As a result, only a transformant by pMM031RAV cultured at 15 ° C. was considered to be a reverse transcriptase having a molecular weight of about 100,000. Band was observed, and it was confirmed that the protein expression system derived from cspA on pMM031 was a cold-inducible type.

  Next, an E. coli extract was prepared and the reverse transcriptase activity was measured. That is, E. coli JM109 transformed with pMM031RAV was inoculated into LB medium containing 100 μg / ml ampicillin and cultured aerobically at 37 ° C. overnight. 4% of this culture solution is inoculated into 100 ml of the same medium and cultured aerobically at 37 ° C. When the turbidity reaches OD600 = 0.6, the culture temperature is set to 15 ° C and further cultured for 5 hours. did. After completion of the culture, the culture solution is centrifuged to collect the cells, and a disruption buffer [50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.3), 60 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 1% NP-40, 1 mM DTT, 5 μM 4-amidino [Phenylmethanesulfonyl fluoride hydrochloride] was suspended in 4.7 ml, and the cells were disrupted by ultrasonic treatment. This was centrifuged and the supernatant was collected to obtain an E. coli extract. This extract was diluted 10-fold with an enzyme diluent [50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.3), 10% glycerol, 0.1% NP-40, 2 mM DTT], and then reverse transcriptase activity was measured according to JP-A-7-39378. As a result, the reverse transcriptase activity of about 1061 units was detected as a whole. This indicates that at least 10 units of reverse transcriptase are expressed per 1 ml of the culture solution, and it was revealed that the expression level of pMM031 at low temperature is high.

(3) Cloning of endo-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide degrading enzyme (Fdase2) gene using pMM031 series low temperature induction vector Endo-type fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide degrading enzyme (ORF-2) derived from Alteromonas sp. SN-1009 strain Hereinafter, it is abbreviated as Fdase 2. Also, Escherichia coli JM109 / pSFDA7, FERM BP-, which is introduced with plasmid pSFDA7 containing a gene encoding the gene encoding the enzyme, the base sequence of which is shown in SEQ ID NO: 10 of the Sequence Listing. 6340), a plasmid was prepared according to a conventional method. The obtained pSFDA7 was digested with HindIII (Takara Shuzo) and then separated by 1% agarose gel electrophoresis, and a DNA fragment of about 4.8 kb encoding the C-terminal region of Fdase2 was cut out and purified. This DNA fragment was inserted into the HindIII site of pMM031 so that the directions of the cspA promoter and Fdase2 gene were the same to obtain pMM031-Fdase2C. Next, pSFDA7 was digested with SnaBI (Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd.), and a DNA fragment of about 2.5 kb containing a region encoding from the fourth amino acid residue to the C-terminal amino acid of Fdase2 was isolated. By inserting this DNA fragment between SmaI and SnaBI of pMM031-Fdase2C obtained earlier, the 4th amino acid residue and subsequent of Fdase2 was connected to the same reading frame as the N-terminal sequence of CspA on pMM031. An attempt was made to construct a fusion polypeptide expression vector. However, when 26 plasmids were extracted from the obtained transformants and analyzed, about 2.5 kb of SnaBI fragment was inserted into 21 plasmids, and only 2 of them had the correct orientation. It was inserted. Further, when the nucleotide sequences of the binding portions of these two plasmids were analyzed, the reading frames of CspA and Fdase2 were shifted due to the deletion of one base occurring at the SmaI cleavage site, and the target fusion polypeptide was expressed. It was not a possible plasmid.

  In the above construction method, since the inserted DNA fragment has a blunt end and is inserted in both forward and reverse directions, an attempt was made to construct a fusion polypeptide expression vector by yet another method. Specifically, a DNA fragment of about 1 kb encoding about half of Fdase2 after the fourth amino acid residue obtained by digesting plasmid pSFDA7 with SnaBI and XbaI (both manufactured by Takara Shuzo) was isolated. By inserting this DNA fragment between SmaI-XbaI of pMM031-Fdase2C obtained previously, an attempt was made to construct the above fusion polypeptide expression plasmid. However, when the obtained transformants were analyzed by extracting and purifying 12 plasmids, there were only 3 plasmids into which the above-described DNA fragment of about 1 kb was inserted. A deletion of 1 to 2 bases occurred at the cleaved site, and a plasmid capable of expressing the target fusion polypeptide could not be obtained. From the above, in the case of a gene whose expression product has a great influence on cell growth like Fdase2, the function of the cspA promoter is not sufficiently suppressed at 37 ° C., and the gene product encoded downstream thereof It became clear that the expression of is the reason why the expression plasmid cannot be constructed.

Example 2 Construction of cold induction plasmid vector pMM037 and examination of inducibility (1) Construction of plasmid vector pMM037 In order to introduce the lac operator region downstream of the cspA promoter, primer CSA + 1RLAC (the base sequence of primer CSA + 1RLAC was added to SEQ ID NO: 11 of the sequence listing) Designed and synthesized. After phosphorylating the 5 ′ end of CSA + 1RLAC using a megalabel kit (MEGALABEL, manufactured by Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd.), PCR was performed using the plasmid pJJG02 as a template together with the above-mentioned primer CSA-67FN, and the lac operator was downstream of the cspA gene promoter. A DNA fragment in which the region was arranged was obtained. This DNA fragment was digested with NcoI (Takara Shuzo) and then inserted between NcoI-SmaI sites of plasmid pTV118N (Takara Shuzo) to construct pMM034. The plasmid was digested with NcoI and AflIII, and the ends were blunted with Klenow fragment, followed by self-ligation to obtain plasmid pMM035 from which the lac promoter derived from pTV118N was removed.

  Next, using the plasmid vector pMM031F1 obtained in Example 1- (1) as a template, primer CSA + 20FN (SEQ ID NO: 12 in the sequence listing shows the base sequence of primer CSA + 20FN) and M13 primer M4 (manufactured by Takara Shuzo). PCR was performed to obtain a DNA fragment from the 19th base downstream of the transcription start point of the cspA gene on the plasmid vector to the multicloning site of pMM031F1. After this DNA fragment was cleaved at the NheI site arranged on the primer CSA + 20FN and the XbaI site on the multiple cloning site, it was inserted between the NheI-XbaI sites of pMM035 obtained in the direction of regenerating each site. Thus, a plasmid vector pMM037 was constructed. This pMM037 consists of cspA gene promoter region (67 bases), transcription initiation base (1 base), lac operator-derived 5 ′ untranslated region (31 bases), cspA-derived 5 ′ untranslated region (141 bases), and CspA This is a plasmid having an EcoRI-HindIII multiple cloning site derived from pTV118N downstream of the N-terminal coding region (38 bases). The 5'-UTR encoded on the plasmid vector pMM037, that is, the base sequence from the transcription start point to the base immediately before the CspA start codon is shown in SEQ ID NO: 2 in the sequence listing.

(2) Examination of inducibility of low temperature induction plasmid vector pMM037 using gene encoding endo-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide degrading enzyme (Fdase2) In the same manner as in Example 1- (3), plasmid vector pMM037 was used. An Fdase2 expression plasmid was constructed. That is, the plasmid pSFDA7 obtained in Example 1- (3) was digested with SnaBI, and an about 2.5 kb SnaBI fragment containing a region encoding from the fourth amino acid residue to the C-terminal amino acid of Fdase2 was isolated. . By inserting this DNA fragment into the BamHI site of the plasmid vector pMM037 constructed in (1) after blunting with the Klenow fragment, the fourth reading frame of Fdase2 is placed in the same reading frame as the N-terminal sequence of CspA on pMM037. An attempt was made to construct a fusion polypeptide expression vector in which the amino acid residues of and after were connected. As a result of extracting and purifying a plasmid from the obtained 6 transformants, about 2.5 kb of SnaBI fragment was inserted in the correct orientation in two. Analysis of one of the nucleotide sequences revealed that it was a fusion polypeptide expression vector in which the reading frames of CspA and Fdase2 matched as intended. The plasmid thus obtained was designated as plasmid pMFDA102.

E. coli JM109 was transformed with pMFDA102 and pMM037. At this time, there was no difference in colony size between the two transformants formed on the plate. The obtained transformants were inoculated into LB medium containing 100 μg / ml ampicillin and cultured at 37 ° C. aerobically overnight. 2% each of these cultures are inoculated into fresh 5 ml of the same medium and cultured aerobically at 37 ° C. When the turbidity reaches OD600 = 0.6, the final concentration becomes 1 mM. After adding IPTG as described above, the culture temperature of one of them was set to 15 ° C. and further cultured for 4 hours. During this culture, the growth rates of both transformants before induction were almost the same. After completion of the culture, the culture solution is centrifuged to collect the cells and suspended in 1 ml of a cell disruption buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl buffer (pH 7.5), 10 mM CaCl ₂ , 10 mM KCl, 0.3 M NaCl), The bacterial cells were crushed by ultrasonic treatment. This was centrifuged and the supernatant was collected to obtain an E. coli extract. As a result of analyzing this Escherichia coli extract by SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, only a transformant by pMFDA102 cultured at 15 ° C., a band considered to be a CspA-Fdase2 fusion polypeptide having a molecular weight of about 90,000 was observed. From the above, it has been shown that the introduction of the lac operator has constructed a cold-inducible expression vector that can construct an expression plasmid for genes whose expression products have a significant effect on cell growth, such as Fdase2. It was done.

  Next, the endo-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-degrading activity of the above Escherichia coli extract was measured by the following operation using the fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-F prepared by the method described in WO97 / 26896 as a substrate.

12 μl of 2.5% fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-F solution, 6 μl of 1 M CaCl ₂ solution, 9 μl of 4 M NaCl solution, 60 μl of buffer containing 50 mM acetic acid, imidazole and tris-hydrochloric acid (pH 7.5), 21 μl Of water and an E. coli extract appropriately diluted with 12 μl of cell disruption buffer were mixed and reacted at 30 ° C. for 3 hours. After the reaction solution was treated at 100 ° C. for 10 minutes, 100 μl of the supernatant obtained by centrifugation was analyzed by HPLC using a gel filtration column, and the average molecular weight of the substrate-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-F and the average of reaction products were analyzed. Molecular weights were compared. As controls, prepared were prepared by reacting under the same conditions using a buffer for cell disruption not containing E. coli extract and using water instead of the sulfated-fucose-containing polysaccharide-F solution. Similarly analyzed by HPLC.

One unit of enzyme is the amount of enzyme that cleaves the fucosyl bond of 1 μmol of fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-F per minute in the above reaction system. Quantification of the cleaved fucosyl bond was determined by the following formula.
{(12 × 2.5) / (100 × MF)} × {(MF / M) −1} × {1 / (180 × 0.01)} × 1000 = U / ml
(12 × 2.5) / 100 × MF: Fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-F (mg) added to the reaction system
MF: Average molecular weight of substrate-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-F M: Average molecular weight of reaction product (MF / M) -1: Number of 1-molecule fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide-F cleaved by enzyme 180: Reaction time (minutes) )
0.01: Amount of enzyme solution (ml)
The HPLC conditions were as follows.
Apparatus: L-6200 type (manufactured by Hitachi, Ltd.)
Column: OHpak SB-806 (8 mm × 300 mm) (Showa Denko)
Eluent: 25 mM imidazole buffer (pH 8) containing 5 mM NaN ₃ , 25 mM CaCl ₂ , 50 mM NaCl
Detection: differential refractive index detector (Shodex RI-71, Showa Denko)
Flow rate: 1 ml / min Column temperature: 25 ° C

  In addition, in order to measure the average molecular weight of the reaction product, a commercially available pullulan (STANDARD P-82, manufactured by Showa Denko KK) having a known molecular weight was analyzed under the same conditions as in the above HPLC analysis, and the molecular weight of pullulan and OHpak SB- The relationship with the retention time of 806 was expressed in a curve and used as a standard curve for measuring the molecular weight of the enzyme reaction product. As a result, the endo-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide degrading activity apparent only in the extract of the transformant by pMFDA102 cultured at 15 ° C. was detected, and the endo-fucose sulfate-containing polysaccharide degrading activity in the extract was 42.6 mU / ml. This showed that pMM037 can express the target protein as an active form under low temperature conditions.

Example 3 (1) Construction of plasmid vector pMM036 Plasmid pJJG21 containing a cspA gene into which an XbaI site has been introduced upstream of the SD sequence [Molecular Microbiology, Vols. 23, 355] ~ 364 (1997)] as a template, PCR was carried out using primers CSA + 20FN and CSA13R2, and the resulting amplified DNA fragment was digested with XbaI and EcoRI (Takara Shuzo) to obtain the 13th amino acid from the SD sequence of the cspA gene. A DNA fragment containing the region encoding the residue was obtained. This DNA fragment was inserted between NheI-EcoRI of the plasmid vector pMM037 obtained in Example 2- (1) to construct a plasmid vector pMM036. This pMM036 has the same structure as the plasmid pMM037 except that the nucleotide sequence 33-161 of the nucleotide sequence encoding 5′-UTR on the plasmid pMM037 shown in SEQ ID NO: 2 in the sequence listing is deleted. It is.

(2) Construction of plasmid vector pMM038 In pMM037, there is a multicloning site downstream of the coding region (38 bases) of the N-terminal region of CspA, and the target gene is expressed as a fusion polypeptide with the N-terminal 12 amino acid residues of CspA. The In order to examine the length of the N-terminal amino acid residue of CspA in the expression of the fusion polypeptide, a multicloning site was placed after the entire coding region (70 amino acid residues) of CspA, and the target gene was 70 amino acids of CspA. A plasmid vector pMM038 was constructed that can be expressed in the form of residues and a fusion polypeptide. That is, using the plasmid pJJG02 as a template, PCR was performed using primers CSA + 20FN and CSA70R (the base sequence of primer CSA70R is shown in SEQ ID NO: 13 in the Sequence Listing), and 19 downstream of the cspA gene transcription start point on the plasmid. A DNA fragment containing the region from the base to the region encoding the 70th amino acid residue of CspA was obtained. This DNA fragment was cleaved at the NheI and EcoRI sites arranged on each primer, and then inserted between NheI and EcoRI of pMM037 obtained in Example 2- (1) to construct a plasmid vector pMM038. This pMM038 is a plasmid vector in which the region encoding 13 amino acid residues from the N-terminus of CspA on pMM037 is replaced with one encoding the entire amino acid sequence of CspA (70 amino acid residues).

(3) Construction of plasmid vector pMM047 In order to introduce a 6-base mutation into the region encoding 5′-UTR on plasmid vector pMM037, primer CSA + 27NF1 (the base sequence of primer CSA + 27NF1 is shown in SEQ ID NO: 14 in the sequence listing) PMM047 was constructed in the same manner as the construction of pMM037. That is, PCR was performed using the plasmid vector pMM031F1 obtained in Example 1- (1) as a template and using the primer CSA + 27NF1 and the M13 primer M4 to obtain an amplified DNA fragment. After cleaving this DNA fragment at the NheI site located on CSA + 27NF1 and the XbaI site on the multiple cloning site, each site regenerates between NheI-XbaI of pMM035 obtained in Example 2- (1). The plasmid vector pMM047 was constructed by inserting in the direction. In this pMM047, 6 base substitution mutations are introduced downstream of the portion derived from the lac operator in the region encoding 5′-UTR on pMM037. The 5′-UTR encoded on the plasmid vector pMM047, that is, the base sequence from the transcription start point to the base immediately before the CspA start codon is shown in SEQ ID NO: 3 in the sequence listing.

(4) Construction of plasmid vector pMM048 Plasmid vector pMM048 was constructed by introducing a deletion mutation of 30 bases into the sequence encoding 5′-UTR of plasmid vector pMM047. That is, the base sequences of primers D3F and D3R (primers D3F and D3R are respectively represented in the sequence table so that the portion corresponding to the region from +56 to +85 downstream of the transcription start point of the natural cspA gene present on pMM047 is deleted. Designed and synthesized (shown in SEQ ID NOs: 15 and 16). Using the plasmid pJJG02 as a template, PCR was performed with a combination of primer D3R and CSA + 27NF1, and a combination of primer D3F and CSA13R2. This reaction solution was subjected to polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and the amplified DNA fragment separated from the primer was extracted from the gel and purified. The obtained amplified DNA fragments were mixed in a PCR reaction buffer, heat-denatured, and then slowly cooled to form heteroduplexes. Taq DNA polymerase (manufactured by Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd.) was added to this mixed solution, and the mixture was kept at 72 ° C. to complete double-stranded synthesis, and then primers CSA + 27NF1 and CSA13R2 were added to perform the second PCR. The obtained amplified DNA fragment was cleaved at the NheI and EcoRI sites arranged on each primer, and then inserted between NheI and EcoRI of the plasmid vector pMM037 obtained in Example 2- (1) to construct a plasmid vector pMM048. did. This pMM048 is obtained by deleting a portion corresponding to the region from +56 to +85 from the transcription start point of the natural cspA gene-derived 5′-UTR out of the region encoding 5′-UTR on pMM047. The 5′-UTR encoded on the plasmid vector pMM048, that is, the base sequence from the transcription start point to the base immediately before the CspA start codon is shown in SEQ ID NO: 4 in the sequence listing.

(5) Examination of inducibility of modified cold induction vector using β-galactosidase gene Plasmid pKM005 containing β-galactosidase (lacZ) gene [1983, New York Academic Press, edited by Masanobu Inoue, Experimental Manipulation Of gene expression, pages 15-32] were digested with BamHI and SalI (both manufactured by Takara Shuzo), separated by 1% agarose gel electrophoresis, and a DNA fragment of about 6.2 kb containing the lacZ gene was excised and extracted and purified. did. The obtained DNA fragment was inserted between the plasmid vectors pMM036, pMM038, pMM047, pMM048 and BamHI-SalI of the plasmid vector pMM037 obtained in Example 2- (1), and the obtained plasmids were respectively plasmids pMM036lac, They were named pMM038lac, pMM047lac, pMM048lac and pMM037lac. These plasmids, except for pMM038lac, were all fused β-galactosidase in which the N-terminal 12 amino acid residues of CspA and the 10 amino acid residues derived from the multiple cloning site were linked at the 10th amino acid residue of β-galactosidase. Code. PMM038lac encodes a fused β-galactosidase in which 70 amino acid residues corresponding to the full length of CspA and 9 amino acid residues derived from the multiple cloning site are linked at the 10th amino acid residue of β-galactosidase.

  On the other hand, in the same manner, an attempt was made to construct a fusion β-galactosidase expression vector using pMM031F1 obtained in Example 1- (1), but the resulting transformant colonies were very small and expressed even at 37 ° C. The following study was not performed because the effect of the gene product was considered to be large. Further, as an expression plasmid having another promoter, a plasmid vector pTV118N (Takara Shuzo) containing a lac promoter-operator was similarly inserted with a DNA fragment of about 6.2 kb containing the lacZ gene between BamHI and SalI. Plasmid pTV118Nlac was constructed and the inducibility was compared.

  Escherichia coli JM109 was transformed with each of the above plasmids, and the resulting transformant was inoculated into LB medium containing 100 μg / ml ampicillin and cultured at 37 ° C. aerobically overnight. Each culture solution was inoculated 1% each in fresh 5 ml of the same medium, cultured aerobically at 37 ° C., and partially sampled when the turbidity reached OD600 = 0.6 to 0.8. Thereafter, IPTG was added to a final concentration of 1 mM, and the culture was further performed at a culture temperature of 15 ° C. The 37 ° C. culture medium immediately before induction and the culture medium sampled after 3 hours and 10 hours after induction were used as samples in 1972, published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, J. MoI. H. The β-galactosidase activity was measured by the method described by Miller, Experiments in Molecular Genetics, pages 352-355.

As shown in Table 1, each plasmid-containing transformant expressed β-galactosidase activity equivalent to or lower than pTV118Nlac used as a control before induction, and cspA of each plasmid. It was shown that the action of the promoter is precisely controlled. In addition, after the induction, the transformant containing all the plasmids except the plasmid pMM036lac expressed β-galactosidase activity more than 10 times that of pTV118Nlac.

(6) Evaluation of protein expression ability at 37 ° C. Among the transformants prepared in Example 3- (5), using transformants other than those transformed with plasmid pMM037lac, The protein expression ability at 37 ° C. was evaluated. M9 medium (containing 1 mM MgSO ₄ , 1 mM CaCl ₂ , 0.2% glucose, 0.2% casamino acid, 0.05 mg / ml tryptophan, 2 μg / ml thiamine, 100 μg / ml ampicillin) is used for cultivation. The experiment was conducted in the same manner as in Example 3- (5) except that the culture temperature was maintained at 37 ° C. even after the addition of IPTG. Further, β-galactosidase activity was measured at two points immediately before induction and 2 hours after induction. The obtained results are shown in Table 2.

The β-galactosidase activity 2 hours after induction of E. coli transformed with the plasmid pMM036lac lacking most of the 5′-UTR contains pMM038lac, pMM047lac, contrary to the result of Example 3- (5). Higher than stuff. Moreover, there is no difference in the activity expressed after induction between pMM048lac and pTV118Nlac. This indicates that pMM048 is effective not only for low temperature conditions but also for protein expression at 37 ° C.

(7) Evaluation of protein expression ability at 10 ° C. and 20 ° C. Among the transformants prepared in Example 3- (5), those other than those transformed with plasmid pMM036lac were used to The protein expression ability at 10 ° C. and 20 ° C. of the transformant was evaluated. The experiment was performed in the same manner as in Example 3- (5) except that the culture temperature after addition of IPTG was maintained at 10 ° C or 20 ° C. β-galactosidase activity is 3 points after induction at 10 ° C., 7 hours after induction, 21 hours after induction, 1 hour after induction at 20 ° C., 3 hours after induction, and 7 hours after induction. The three points were measured. Table 3 shows the results at 10 ° C, and Table 4 shows the results at 20 ° C.

  As shown in Table 3, all of the transformants containing each plasmid, even under low temperature conditions such as 10 ° C., observed a much higher induction of β-galactosidase activity than that containing pTV118Nlac, and these High expression of the vector under low temperature conditions was confirmed. Among them, pMM038lac has a higher expression level than other structures, and is particularly effective when the target gene introduced into the vector of the present invention is expressed as a fusion protein with the entire coding region of CspA. ing. On the other hand, pMM048lac in which a deletion mutation of 30 bases is introduced into 5′-UTR shows an expression level that is equivalent to or slightly higher than that of pMM047lac having no mutation. Is also effective. In addition, as shown in Table 4, in the case of pMM047lac, induced expression of β-galactosidase activity lower than that of transformants containing other plasmids was observed under the temperature condition of 20 ° C.

From these experimental results and the induced amounts of β-galactosidase activity at 15 ° C. and 37 ° C. shown in Examples 3- (5) and (6), pMM047 is mainly low-temperature specific, such as 15 ° C. or less. PMM048, a vector having an expression pattern, in which a deletion mutation of 30 bases is introduced into the 5′-UTR of pMM047, is a vector that can efficiently express a target protein in a wide temperature range from low temperature to normal temperature (37 ° C.). It was shown that.

Example 4 Construction of pCold01 and pCold02 Series Plasmids and Examination of Inducibility (1) Construction of pCold01 Series Plasmids Using the plasmid pJJG02 containing cspA gene as a template, synthetic DNA primers CSA-ter-FHX and CSA-ter-R (primer CSA-ter-R PCR was performed using the base sequences of FHX and CSA-ter-R shown in SEQ ID NOs: 17 and 18 in the sequence listing, respectively, to obtain a DNA fragment containing the transcription terminator region of the cspA gene. This DNA fragment was cleaved at the HindIII and EcoO109I sites arranged on each primer, and then inserted between HindIII at the end of the multicloning site of pMM038 obtained in Example 3- (2) and the EcoO109I site downstream thereof. PMM039 was constructed. Next, the synthetic oligonucleotides KS-linker1 and KS-linker2 (the base sequences of KS-linker1 and KS-linker2 are shown in SEQ ID NOs: 19 and 20, respectively) between KpnI and SalI in the multicloning site of pMM039. PMM040 was constructed by inserting a synthetic DNA linker annealed with

  On the other hand, in order to introduce the NcoI site at the translation initiation codon, primers CSA1NC-F and CSA1NC-R (base sequences of primers CSA1NC-F and CSA1NC-R are shown in SEQ ID NOs: 21 and 22, respectively). Synthesized. The first PCR reaction was performed with the combination of primer CSA1NC-F and CSA70R using plasmid pJJG02 as a template and the combination of primer CSA1NC-R and CSA + 27NF1 using plasmid pMM047 as a template. This reaction solution was subjected to 3% agarose gel electrophoresis, and the amplified DNA fragment separated from the primer was extracted from the gel and purified. The obtained amplified DNA fragments were mixed in a PCR reaction buffer, heat-denatured, and then slowly cooled to form heteroduplexes. Taq DNA polymerase (manufactured by Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd.) was added to this mixed solution, and the mixture was incubated at 72 ° C. to complete double-strand synthesis, and then the second PCR was performed with a combination of primers CSA + 27NF1 and CSA13R. The obtained amplified DNA fragment was subcloned into pT7Blue T-vector (manufactured by Novagen) to confirm the nucleotide sequence, and then the DNA fragment released by cutting at the NheI and EcoRI sites arranged on each primer was released into plasmid vector pMM040. The plasmid vector pCold01NC1 was constructed by inserting between NheI and EcoRI.

  Furthermore, by performing a second PCR reaction using primer CSA13R2 or CSA13R3 (SEQ ID NO: 23 shows the base sequence of primer CSA13R3) instead of primer CSA13R, the N-terminal part of CspA inserted into pCold01NC1 A plasmid vector pCold01NC2 from which the 3 ′ end of the region encoding 1 was deleted by 1 base and a plasmid vector pCold01NC3 from which 1 base was added were constructed in the same manner.

  These three types of plasmids are series vectors each having an NcoI site at the start codon of the cspA gene on each plasmid, and the reading frame starting therefrom is different on the multiple cloning site. In addition, these plasmids have a sequence in which a stop codon appears in any of the three reading frames downstream of the multicloning site, and further include a transcription terminator region derived from the cspA gene downstream. In pCold01NC2, the 13th amino acid residue from the N-terminus of CspA encoded by the plasmid is substituted from asparagine to lysine due to this one base deletion.

  Next, instead of CSA1NC-F and CSA1NC-R, primers CSA1ND-F and CSA1ND-R (base sequences of primers CSA1ND-F and CSA1ND-R are shown in SEQ ID NOs: 24 and 25, respectively) are used. By performing the second PCR reaction, the pCold01ND series plasmid, pCold01ND1, ND2, and ND3, in which the NcoI site at the translation start codon of the pCold01NC series plasmid was replaced with the NdeI site, were constructed in exactly the same manner.

  The six types of pCold01 series plasmids constructed in this way have an expression system with pMM047 as the basic skeleton, and are the same as pMM047 except for the restriction enzyme site located at the start codon and the sequence after the multicloning site.

(2) Construction of pCold02 Series Vector Six types of pCold02 series plasmids were constructed in the same manner as in Example 4- (1). That is, by using the plasmid pMM048 as a template instead of the plasmid pMM047 in the first PCR reaction using the combination of the primer CSA1NC-R and CSA + 27NF1 or the combination of the primer CSA1ND-R and CSA + 27NF1, it is completely the same as Example 4- (1). PCold02 series plasmids, pCold02NC1, NC2, NC3, ND1, ND2, and ND3 were constructed in the same process.

  The six types of pCold02 series plasmids constructed in this way have an expression system with pMM048 as the basic skeleton, and are the same as pMM048 except for the restriction enzyme site arranged at the start codon and the sequence after the multicloning site. These are the same as the corresponding plasmids of the pCold01 series except for the deletion of the portion corresponding to the region from +56 to +85 from the transcription start point of the natural cspA gene-derived 5′-UTR characteristic of pMM048. is there.

(3) Examination of the induction ability of pCold01 and pCold02 using the β-galactosidase gene The induction ability of pCold01 and pCold02 was examined using the β-galactosidase gene in the same manner as in Example 3- (5). First, an about 6.2 kb DNA fragment containing the lacZ gene was inserted between BamHI-SalI of pCold01NC2, pCold01ND2, pCold02ND2, and pCold02ND2, and the resulting plasmids were designated as plasmids pCold01NC2lac, pCold01ND2c, pCold01ND2 These plasmids all encode a fusion β-galactosidase in which the N-terminal 12 amino acid residues of CspA and the 10 amino acid residues derived from the multiple cloning site are linked at the 10th amino acid residue of β-galactosidase.

  Escherichia coli JM109 was transformed with each of the above plasmids, and the resulting transformant was subjected to an expression induction experiment at 15 ° C. in the same manner as in Example 3- (5). β-galactosidase activity was measured at 3 points immediately before induction, 3 hours after induction, and 10 hours after induction. The results for pCold01NC2lac and pCold02NC2lac are shown in Table 5. In addition, when the ND series vector was used, the inductive ability was almost the same as when the corresponding NC series vector was used.

As shown in Table 5, the transformants containing each plasmid expressed only low β-galactosidase activity before induction at 37 ° C., and the action of the cspA promoter of each plasmid was accurately controlled. It was shown that. Further, after the induction, an increase in β-galactosidase activity almost similar to that of pMM047lac and pMM048lac shown in Example 3- (5) is observed. Therefore, the pCold plasmid has a multicloning site and a transcription terminator designed for transgene expression, and the expression at 37 ° C. is controlled, so that the transgene product can be expressed with high efficiency under low temperature conditions. Series plasmid.

Example 5 Construction of pCold series plasmid introduced with lacI gene and examination of host (1) Construction of pCold03 series and pCold04 series plasmids pCold01 series and pCold02 series plasmids prepared in Examples 4- (1) and (2) Since the plasmid vector does not have a repressor gene, it was necessary to use an E. coli strain expressing lac repressor as a host. Therefore, based on pCold01 and 02, plasmid vectors pCold03 and 04 into which the lacI gene was introduced and plasmid vectors pCold05 and 06 into which the lacI ^q gene was introduced were constructed, respectively.

First, pMM040 obtained in Example 4- (1) was digested with EcoT22I, and then the ends were blunted using T4 DNA polymerase. PET21b (manufactured by Novagen) was digested with SphI and PshAI (both manufactured by Takara Shuzo), and a DNA fragment containing the lacI gene obtained by blunting the ends with T4 DNA polymerase was inserted. Was constructed in the reverse direction of the cspA promoter and designated pMM040I. Similarly, the ends of the DNA fragment containing the lacI ^q gene obtained by digesting plasmid pMJR1560 [Gen, 51, 225-267 (1987)] with KpnI and PstI (both manufactured by Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd.) This was introduced into the smoothed EcoT22I site of pMM040. A plasmid in which the orientation of the lacI ^q gene was inserted in the direction opposite to that of the cspA promoter was selected and named pMM040I ^q .

As with in the construction of pCold01 and 02 described in Example 4- (1) and (2), pMM040I, to insert the NheI-EcoRI fragment for each series vector between NheI-EcoRI of PMM040I ^q Thus, 6 types of plasmid vectors of each of pCold03, pCold04, pCold05, and pCold06 series were constructed. The pCold03 and pCold04 series plasmids constructed in this manner have the same structure as the pCold01 series and pCold02 series plasmids, respectively, except for having the lacI gene. The pCold05 and pCold06 series plasmids are obtained by replacing the lacI gene of the pCold03 and pCold04 series plasmids with the lacI ^q gene, respectively.

(2) Examination of effect of lac repressor using β-galactosidase gene In the same manner as in Example 3- (5), the plasmid pKM005 was digested with BamHI and SalI, and a DNA fragment containing the lacZ gene was extracted and purified. The obtained DNA fragment was inserted between BamHI-SalI of NC2 in the frame of the above plasmid vector pCold03, 04, 05, 06 series, and the resulting plasmids were named pCold03NC2lac, pCold04NC2lac, pCold05NC2lac, pCold06NC2lac, respectively. .

  Using a total of 6 types of pCold01NC2lac, pCold02NC2lac and the above plasmids pCold03NC2lac, pCold04NC2lac, pCold05NC2lac, pCold06NC2lac constructed in Example 4- (3) Tried to convert. At the same time, a plasmid vector pCold01NC2 having no lacZ gene was also transformed as a control. According to a conventional method, E. coli DH5α strain was transformed by the competent cell method, and in the case of plasmids other than pCold02NC2lac, transformants were obtained with a transformation efficiency equivalent to that of the control. However, in the case of pCold02NC2lac, No conversion was obtained. In the case of pCold01NC2lac, the colonies of the obtained transformants were smaller than those of other transformants.

  Next, the ability of each plasmid to control the expression of the target protein and the ability to express the target protein at low temperatures were examined. That is, the obtained transformant was inoculated into LB medium containing 100 μg / ml ampicillin and cultured at 37 ° C. aerobically overnight. Each culture solution was inoculated 2% each in fresh 5 ml of the same medium, cultured aerobically at 37 ° C., partially sampled when the turbidity reached around OD600 = 0.6, and then finished. IPTG was added to a concentration of 1 mM, and the culture temperature was further set to 15 ° C. Β-galactosidase activity was measured in the same manner as in Example 3- (5) using the 37 ° C. culture solution immediately before induction and the culture solution sampled 3 hours, 7 hours, and 24 hours after induction as samples. It was.

As shown in Table 6, the transformant having pCold01NC2lac without the lacI gene shows high β-galactosidase activity even in the non-induced state at 37 ° C., and is transformed with other plasmids containing the lacI gene or the lacI ^q gene. The body showed low β-galactosidase activity. This series of plasmids from pCold03 having lacI and lacI ^q gene on a plasmid to pCold06 shows that suppression of expression has been carried out substantially effective in culture conditions 37 ° C.. Furthermore, this means that the expression control is incomplete only at the function of the region encoding the 5′-UTR of the cspA gene at 37 ° C., and the substantial expression is achieved by the normal functioning of the operator sequences arranged on these plasmids. It shows that adjustment is possible for the first time. Also, PCold05NC2lac with lacI ^q gene, transformants PCold06NC2lac beta-galactosidase activity, PCold03NC2lac with lacI gene, lower than transformants PCold04NC2lac, that towards the lacI ^q gene can be controlled effectively expressed Became clear.

On the other hand, after expression induction by temperature shift to low temperature and addition of an inducer, an increase in β-galactosidase activity over time was observed in both cases of transformants using plasmids containing the lacI gene or the lacI ^q gene. These induction levels are in good agreement with the induction patterns of transformants obtained by transforming the lac repressor highly expressing E. coli strains shown in Table 5 with pCold01NC2lac or pCold02NC2lac. This indicates that it does not affect the ability to induce protein expression. This indicates that in the case of the vector of the present invention using the lac operator as an operator, there is no host restriction on the lacI gene by introducing the lacI gene or the lacI ^q gene onto the vector.

Example 6 Construction of cold induction vectors pCold07 and pCold08 series plasmids with highly complementary downstream box sequences and purification tags and examination of inducibility (1) Construction of plasmids pCold07NC2 and pCold08NC2 In the case of pCold03 series or pCold04 series plasmids, N of CspA There is a multicloning site downstream of the terminal coding region, and the target protein is expressed as a fusion protein with the N-terminal 12 or 13 amino acid residues of CspA. There is a downstream box sequence in the N-terminal coding region of CspA. When the anti-downstream box sequence of E. coli is considered to be 15 bases of 1467-1481 in 16S ribosomal RNA, this sequence is contained in the 15 bases. Complementarity to the extent that 10 bases bind. The base sequence encoding the N-terminal of CspA is replaced with the base sequence shown in SEQ ID NO: 28 in the sequence listing, which is completely complementary to the above 15 base sequence, and further 6 residues as a tag sequence for purification are left downstream. Plasmids pCold07NC2 and pCold08NC2 into which a base sequence encoding a recognition amino acid sequence of protease factor Xa for excision of a sequence encoding the histidine residue of the group and a leader peptide encoded by these base sequences were constructed.

  First, plasmid pCold03NC2 was digested with NcoI and EcoRI, and a vector fragment was prepared except for the region encoding the N-terminal sequence of the cspA gene on pCold03NC2. Next, synthetic oligonucleotides DB-3 and DB-4 (the base sequences of DB-3 and DB-4 are shown in SEQ ID NOs: 26 and 27, respectively) were synthesized, annealed, and prepared in advance. The plasmid pCold07NC2 was constructed by inserting between NcoI and EcoRI of pCold03NC2. Moreover, the plasmid pCold08NC2 was constructed by replacing the region encoding the N-terminal sequence of the cspA gene on the plasmid pCold04NC2 with the synthetic DNA linker by the same process.

(2) Examination of Inducibility of Modified Cold Induction Vector Using β-Galactosidase Gene After digesting the plasmid vector pCold01NC2lac constructed in Example 4- (3) with BamHI and SalI, about 6.2 kb containing the lacZ gene. The DNA fragment was extracted and purified. The obtained DNA fragments were inserted between BamHI-SalI of the above plasmids pCold07NC2 and pCold08NC2, respectively, and the resulting plasmids were named pCold07NC2lac and pCold08NC2lac, respectively. These plasmids all have N-terminal 5 amino acid residues encoded by a downstream box sequence completely complementary to the anti-downstream box sequence in 16S ribosomal RNA, and 6 residue histidine as a tag sequence for purification. An N-terminal leader peptide consisting of 25 residues in total, 4 amino acid residues that are a factor Xa recognition amino acid sequence and 10 amino acid residues derived from the multiple cloning site, is linked at the 10th amino acid residue of β-galactosidase Encoding a fused β-galactosidase. On the other hand, as an expression plasmid having other promoters, the plasmid pET21bac of pET-system plasmid (manufactured by Novagen) was similarly constructed by inserting a DNA fragment of about 6.2 kb containing the lacZ gene between BamHI and SalI. Then, a comparative study of inducibility was performed.

  Escherichia coli JM109 [Escherichia coli JM109 (DE3) in the case of pET21blac, Promega)] was transformed with each of the above-mentioned plasmids, pCold01NC2lac and pCold02NC2lac constructed in Example 4, and the transformants obtained were obtained in Examples. An expression induction experiment at 15 ° C. was performed in the same manner as in 3- (5). β-galactosidase activity was measured at 3 points immediately before induction, 3 hours after induction, and 10 hours after induction.

As shown in Table 7, the transformants containing pCold07NC2lac and pCold08NC2lac expressed only low β-galactosidase activity before induction at 37 ° C., and the action of the cspA promoter of each plasmid was precisely controlled. It was shown that In addition, at 7 hours after induction, the transformant containing plasmid pCold07NC2lac has a β-galactosidase activity that is 5 times or more of that containing pCold03NC2lac, and the transformant containing plasmid pCold08NC2lac is 4 times or more β-galactosidase than that containing pCold04NC2lac. Galactosidase activity was expressed. In addition, it was revealed that the pCold07 series and pCold08 series plasmids have a high expression ability particularly in a short time after low-temperature induction, compared with the pET system which is a powerful expression vector among the existing expression vectors.

EFFECT OF THE INVENTION According to the present invention, there is provided an expression vector that can be controlled at normal temperature and exhibits high expression efficiency under low temperature conditions. By using this vector, a transformant containing a gene encoding a protein that exhibits a harmful effect on the host can be obtained. In addition, by performing protein expression under low-temperature conditions using the vector, it is possible to suppress formation of inclusion bodies and efficiently obtain a protein having activity.

SEQ ID NO: 7 shows the base sequence of primer CSA-67FN.
SEQ ID NO: 8 shows the base sequence of primer CSA13R.
SEQ ID NO: 9 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer CSA13R2.
SEQ ID NO: 11 shows the base sequence of primer CSA + 1RLAC.
SEQ ID NO: 12 shows the base sequence of primer CSA + 20FN.
SEQ ID NO: 13 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer CSA70R.
SEQ ID NO: 14 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer CSA + 27NF1.
SEQ ID NO: 15 shows the base sequence of primer D3F.
SEQ ID NO: 16 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer D3R.
SEQ ID NO: 17 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer CSA-ter-FHX.
SEQ ID NO: 18 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer CSA-ter-R.
SEQ ID NO: 19 shows the base sequence of synthetic oligonucleotide KS-linker1.
SEQ ID NO: 20 shows the base sequence of synthetic oligonucleotide KS-linker2.
SEQ ID NO: 21 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer CSA1NC-F.
SEQ ID NO: 22 shows the base sequence of primer CSA1NC-R.
SEQ ID NO: 23 is the base sequence of primer CSA13R3.
SEQ ID NO: 24 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer CSA1ND-F.
SEQ ID NO: 25 shows the nucleotide sequence of primer CSA1ND-R.
SEQ ID NO: 26 shows the base sequence of synthetic oligonucleotide DB-3.
SEQ ID NO: 27 is the base sequence of synthetic oligonucleotide DB-4.

Claims (2)

A promoter selected from the group consisting of (1) and (2) below:
(1) a promoter composed of a region after −67 counted from the transcription start point of the cspA gene, which does not include a region to be transcribed into mRNA, and (2) a base sequence represented by SEQ ID NO: 5 in the sequence listing Promoter consisting of   A vector containing the promoter according to claim 1.