High-efficiency heterologous expression of nattokinase based on a
combinatorial strategy
Abstract
Nattokinase, traditionally produced by the fermentation of Bacillus
subtilis natto, has high-efficiency and safe thrombolytic effect.
However, low activity limits its industrial application as thrombolytic
agent. In this study, the nattokinase encoding-gene from B. subtilis
natto was heterologously expressed in B. subtilis WB800 to realize the
high-efficiency of nattokinase. At first, the gene was amplified and
connected to the Escherichia coli-B. subtilis shuttle plasmid pP43NMK to
construct the recombinant plasmid pP43NMK-NKF. The recombinant WB800-NKF
showed nattokinase enzyme activity of 22.3 FU/mL, with a molecular
weight of enzyme protein of 27.7 kDa by SDS-PAGE. The enzyme activity
increased to 75.3 FU/mL after the signal peptide starting codon is
optimized as ATG from GTG. A total of 19 signal peptides were screened
to construct a series of recombinants (PSP1–PSP19) and compared with
the original signal peptide of nattokinase. Among them, the recombinant
PSP7 (SPYqxM) showed the highest nattokinase enzyme activity, 235.2
FU/mL. Furthermore, the construction of the promoter tandem expression
vector proved that the dual-promoter recombinant PSP7C43 (P43-P43) has
the highest enzyme activity of 247.1 FU/mL, 1.16 times that of the
single promoter recombinant PSP7 (P43). After the optimization of
fermentation conditions, the nattokinase enzyme activity of recombinant
PSP7C43 finally increased to 325.4 FU/mL. This enzyme activity reached
the highest level under the same detection method. The combinatorial
strategy adopted in this study realizes the substantial improvement of
nattokinase expression level, which lays a foundation for the industrial
development of nattokinase as a thrombolytic reagent.