Acting on Folding Effectors to Improve Recombinant Protein Yields and Functional Quality

Abstract

Molecular and chemical chaperones/foldases can strongly contribute to improve the amounts and the structural quality of recombinant proteins. Several methodologies have been proposed to optimize their beneficial effects. This chapter presents a condensed summary of the biotechnological opportunities offered by this approach followed by a protocol describing the method we use for expressing disulfide bond-dependent recombinant antibodies in the cytoplasm of bacteria engineered to overexpress sulfhydryl oxidase and DsbC isomerase. The system is based on the possibility to trigger the foldase expression independently and before the induction of the target protein. As a consequence, the recombinant antibody synthesis starts only after enough foldases have accumulated to promote correct folding of the antibody.