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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, July 1999, p. 2934-2941, Vol. 65, No. 7
Department of Genetics, Groningen
Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute, University of
Groningen, 9751 NN Haren, The Netherlands
Received 8 February 1999/Accepted 13 April 1999
Despite a high capacity for secretion of homologous proteins, the
secretion of heterologous proteins by Bacillus subtilis is
frequently inefficient. In the present studies, we have investigated and compared bottlenecks in the secretion of four heterologous proteins: Bacillus lichenifomis
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Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Evaluation of Bottlenecks in the Late Stages of
Protein Secretion in Bacillus subtilis


-amylase (AmyL),
Escherichia coli TEM
-lactamase (Bla), human pancreatic
-amylase (HPA), and a lysozyme-specific single-chain antibody. The
same expression and secretion signals were used for all four of these
proteins. Notably, all identified bottlenecks relate to late stages in
secretion, following translocation of the preproteins across the
cytoplasmic membrane. These bottlenecks include processing by signal
peptidase, passage through the cell wall, and degradation in the wall
and growth medium. Strikingly, all translocated HPA was misfolded, its
stability depending on the formation of disulfide bonds. This suggests
that the disulfide bond oxidoreductases of B. subtilis cannot form the disulfide bonds in HPA correctly. As the secretion bottlenecks differed for each heterologous protein tested, it is
anticipated that the efficient secretion of particular groups of
heterologous proteins with the same secretion bottlenecks will require
the engineering of specifically optimized host strains.
*
Corresponding author. Present address: Department of
Pharmaceutical Biology, University of Groningen, Antonius Deusinglaan 1, 9713 AV Groningen, The Netherlands. Phone: 31 50 3633079. Fax: 31 50 3632348. E-mail: J.M.van.Dijl{at}farm.rug.nl.
Present address: ID-DLO, 8200 AB, Lelystad, The Netherlands.
Present address: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of
Washington, Seattle WA 98195-1750.
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