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Insights into the prevalence and underlying causes of clonal variation through transcriptomic analysis in Pichia pastoris.

ABSTRACT: Clonal variation, wherein a range of specific productivities of secreted proteins are observed from supposedly identical transformants, is an accepted aspect of working with Pichia pastoris. It means that a significant number of transformants need to be tested to obtain a representative sample, and in commercial protein production, companies regularly screen thousands of transformants to select for the highest secretor. Here, we have undertaken a detailed investigation of this phenomenon by characterising clones transformed with the human serum albumin gene. The titers of nine clones, each containing a single copy of the human serum albumin gene (identified by qPCR), were measured and the clones grouped into three categories, namely, high-, mid- and low-level secretors. Transcriptomic analysis, using microarrays, showed that no regulatory patterns consistently correlated with titer, suggesting that the causes of clonal variation are varied. However, a number of physiological changes appeared to underlie the differences in titer, suggesting there is more than one biochemical signature for a high-secreting strain. An anomalous low-secreting strain displaying high transcript levels that appeared to be nutritionally starved further emphasises the complicated nature of clonal variation.

SUBMITTER: Aw R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5486821 | biostudies-other | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Insights into the prevalence and underlying causes of clonal variation through transcriptomic analysis in Pichia pastoris.

Aw Rochelle R Barton Geraint R GR Leak David J DJ

Applied microbiology and biotechnology 20170522 12

Clonal variation, wherein a range of specific productivities of secreted proteins are observed from supposedly identical transformants, is an accepted aspect of working with Pichia pastoris. It means that a significant number of transformants need to be tested to obtain a representative sample, and in commercial protein production, companies regularly screen thousands of transformants to select for the highest secretor. Here, we have undertaken a detailed investigation of this phenomenon by char ...[more]

PMID: 28534062

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Project description:BackgroundExpanding the application of technical enzymes, e.g., in industry and agriculture, commands the acceleration and cost-reduction of bioprocess development. Microplates and shake flasks are massively employed during screenings and early phases of bioprocess development, although major drawbacks such as low oxygen transfer rates are well documented. In recent years, miniaturization and parallelization of stirred and shaken bioreactor concepts have led to the development of novel microbioreactor concepts. They combine high cultivation throughput with reproducibility and scalability, and represent promising tools for bioprocess development.ResultsParallelized microplate cultivation of the eukaryotic protein production host Pichia pastoris was applied effectively to support miniaturized phenotyping of clonal libraries in batch as well as fed-batch mode. By tailoring a chemically defined growth medium, we show that growth conditions are scalable from microliter to 0.8 L lab-scale bioreactor batch cultivation with different carbon sources. Thus, the set-up allows for a rapid physiological comparison and preselection of promising clones based on online data and simple offline analytics. This is exemplified by screening a clonal library of P. pastoris constitutively expressing AppA phytase from Escherichia coli. The protocol was further modified to establish carbon-limited conditions by employing enzymatic substrate-release to achieve screening conditions relevant for later protein production processes in fed-batch mode.ConclusionThe comparison of clonal rankings under batch and fed-batch-like conditions emphasizes the necessity to perform screenings under process-relevant conditions. Increased biomass and product concentrations achieved after fed-batch microscale cultivation facilitates the selection of top producers. By reducing the demand to conduct laborious and cost-intensive lab-scale bioreactor cultivations during process development, this study will contribute to an accelerated development of protein production processes.

Project description:BACKGROUND: DNA Microarrays are regarded as a valuable tool for basic and applied research in microbiology. However, for many industrially important microorganisms the lack of commercially available microarrays still hampers physiological research. Exemplarily, our understanding of protein folding and secretion in the yeast Pichia pastoris is presently widely dependent on conclusions drawn from analogies to Saccharomyces cerevisiae. To close this gap for a yeast species employed for its high capacity to produce heterologous proteins, we developed full genome DNA microarrays for P. pastoris and analyzed the unfolded protein response (UPR) in this yeast species, as compared to S. cerevisiae. RESULTS: By combining the partially annotated gene list of P. pastoris with de novo gene finding a list of putative open reading frames was generated for which an oligonucleotide probe set was designed using the probe design tool TherMODO (a thermodynamic model-based oligoset design optimizer). To evaluate the performance of the novel array design, microarrays carrying the oligo set were hybridized with samples from treatments with dithiothreitol (DTT) or a strain overexpressing the UPR transcription factor HAC1, both compared with a wild type strain in normal medium as untreated control. DTT treatment was compared with literature data for S. cerevisiae, and revealed similarities, but also important differences between the two yeast species. Overexpression of HAC1, the most direct control for UPR genes, resulted in significant new understanding of this important regulatory pathway in P. pastoris, and generally in yeasts. CONCLUSION: The differences observed between P. pastoris and S. cerevisiae underline the importance of DNA microarrays for industrial production strains. P. pastoris reacts to DTT treatment mainly by the regulation of genes related to chemical stimulus, electron transport and respiration, while the overexpression of HAC1 induced many genes involved in translation, ribosome biogenesis, and organelle biosynthesis, indicating that the regulatory events triggered by DTT treatment only partially overlap with the reactions to overexpression of HAC1. The high reproducibility of the results achieved with two different oligo sets is a good indication for their robustness, and underlines the importance of less stringent selection of regulated features, in order to avoid a large number of false negative results.

Project description:Over the past three decades, due to the universal application of Pichia yeast in the fermentation industry as well as the establishment of Pichia pastoris fermentation process for more than 30 years, the technology of the whole process has become very mature and has now reached a stagnated period of growth. However, studies and research conducted on the genomics of the classic fermentation process and the uncovering of the biological phenomena in the fermentation process from the point of view of high-throughput gene or protein is still in its early stages, and there is still insufficient data within this field. First, in collaboration with Agilent Company, we designed and prepared an expression microarray that could be used for the detection of Pichia pastoris transcriptomics. The transcriptomic changes in the five key technology steps (time points), during the fermentation process of Pichia pastoris would then be detected with the aid of an expression microarray. The five key steps of technology described above formed two important biological processes, namely, the limiting carbon source replacement and secondly, the fermentative production of exogenous proteins. The biological phenomena involved in these two processes were displayed and analyzed at the transcriptional level. In addition to this, with regard to the most important function in the fermentation process of Pichia pastoris, oxid-reduction, the metabolic drift process was analyzed and the important genes that might dominate the changes in the metabolic flux were discovered creatively by using the function tree method in this paper. This study was undertaken from the point of view of the transcriptome and the biological phenomena in the fermemntation process of Pichia pastoris. Both of which, were thoroughly explained during this study. The hope is for many more researchers to optimize the strain fermentation process, to produce proteins at the genetic level, as well as providing and obtaining new perspectives and detailed scientific data for the continued development within this field.

Dataset Information

Insights into the prevalence and underlying causes of clonal variation through transcriptomic analysis in Pichia pastoris.

Publications

Insights into the prevalence and underlying causes of clonal variation through transcriptomic analysis in Pichia pastoris.

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