Biotech Updates

Soluble Expression of Spike Protein of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus in E. coli

May 25, 2016

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is a highly contagious pathogen of swine. The spike glycoprotein (S) of PEDV plays a pivotal role in the induction of neutralizing antibodies against PEDV, which could be an ideal target for vaccine development. To develop a subunit vaccine for PEDV, Da-Chuan Piao of Seoul National University cloned two different fragments of S protein and expressed it as glutathione S-transferase (GST)-tagged fusion proteins, namely rGST-COE and rGST-S1D, in Escherichia coli.

The team tested various chaperone co-expression systems and found that co-expression of trigger factor (TF) with recombinant proteins at 15°C was most useful in soluble production of rGST-COE and rGST-S1D. The soluble rGST-COE and rGST-S1D were then purified and tested. Analysis revealed that the purified proteins showed immune reactivity with pig anti-PEDV immune sera.

Their results suggest that soluble rGST-COE and rGST-S1D produced by co-expressing chaperones may have the potential to be used as subunit vaccine antigens against PEDV.

For more information, read the article in BMC Biotechnology.