Imbalance of heterologous protein folding and disulfide bond formation rates yields runaway oxidative stress

Keith E.J. Tyo, Zihe Liu, Dina Petranovic, Jens Nielsen*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

71 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: The protein secretory pathway must process a wide assortment of native proteins for eukaryotic cells to function. As well, recombinant protein secretion is used extensively to produce many biologics and industrial enzymes. Therefore, secretory pathway dysfunction can be highly detrimental to the cell and can drastically inhibit product titers in biochemical production. Because the secretory pathway is a highly-integrated, multi-organelle system, dysfunction can happen at many levels and dissecting the root cause can be challenging. In this study, we apply a systems biology approach to analyze secretory pathway dysfunctions resulting from heterologous production of a small protein (insulin precursor) or a larger protein (α-amylase).Results: HAC1-dependent and independent dysfunctions and cellular responses were apparent across multiple datasets. In particular, processes involving (a) degradation of protein/recycling amino acids, (b) overall transcription/translation repression, and (c) oxidative stress were broadly associated with secretory stress.Conclusions: Apparent runaway oxidative stress due to radical production observed here and elsewhere can be explained by a futile cycle of disulfide formation and breaking that consumes reduced glutathione and produces reactive oxygen species. The futile cycle is dominating when protein folding rates are low relative to disulfide bond formation rates. While not strictly conclusive with the present data, this insight does provide a molecular interpretation to an, until now, largely empirical understanding of optimizing heterologous protein secretion. This molecular insight has direct implications on engineering a broad range of recombinant proteins for secretion and provides potential hypotheses for the root causes of several secretory-associated diseases.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number16
JournalBMC Biology
Volume10
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 2012

Funding

We thank Dr Intawat Nookaew for assistance with transcriptome analysis and FBA. We thank NIH F32 Kirschstein NRSA fellowship (F32 GM083647), The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, EU Framework VII project SYSINBIO (Grant no. 212766), European Research Council project INSYSBIO (Grant no. 247013), and the Chalmers Foundation for funding.

Keywords

  • Hac1
  • Oxidative stress
  • Protein production
  • Protein secretion
  • Unfolded protein response

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • Structural Biology
  • Physiology
  • Biotechnology
  • Plant Science
  • Cell Biology
  • Developmental Biology

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