Thursday, September 9, 2021

ProteoCool Pills#12: Rapid insertion/deletion/replacement of N-terminal signal peptide sequences using PIPE cloning

 In both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, all proteins are synthesized in cytoplasm. 

Proteins that are destined to enter into the secretory pathway are usually endowed with an N-terminal signal peptides (SPs, known also as N terminal leader sequences): the signal peptide those are short peptides and usually have a length of 16–30 amino acids.

After directing proteins to their specific locations, SPs are removed by signal peptidases

The presence or absence of the SPs allow to direct the expression of the protein in different cellular compartments:

- E.coli,  a protein with-out SPs will be directed in the cytoplasm, while the addiction of a SPs (as pelB, OmpA signal peptides) of the signal will  direct the protein into the periplasm;

-In Gram positive bacteria (as baccilus) and mammalian cells (as HEK293, CHO) the addiction of N terminal SPs direct the protein in the culture surnatant.

Since the accumulation of recombinant proteins in the cytoplasm may lead to the formation of inclusion bodies or protein degradation via proteases and the recombinant protein folding may also affected from the reducing conditions of the cell compartment (eg E.coli cytoplasm is strongly reducing and not compatible with S-S bond formation), the selection of the right Signal peptides play a decisive role in the industrial production of recombinant proteins.

It has been shown that using different homologous or heterologous signal peptides can affect the yields of recombinant proteins. Selecting a proper signal peptide to increase the secretion efficiency becomes a common methodology to optimize the production of recombinant protein

The availability of a simple cloning method to readily add, replace and modify a signal peptide sequences in an expression clone is therefore an essential tool to screen for the best protein/antibody productivity.

As already mentioned in the ProteoCool n°1: Cloning methods overview; The PIPE cloning is a nice method to manipulate expression vectors and perform mutagenesis, insertion and/or deletion or some vector regions.

With a single vector PCR is possible to insert dna fragments up to 80-100bp in any  vector region and therefore it can be applied also to the insertion of replacement of signal peptides in the vector of interest.




Using the PIPE cloning i  was able to insert pelB (MKYLLPTAAAGLLLLAAQPAMA)  and ompA (MKKTAIAIAVALAGFATVAQA) signal peptides in several pet15 clones for E.coli expression and other mammalian signal peptide in pcdna 3.4 clones for expression in Expi293 and Expi-CHO.

Of couse a similar approach could be performed to insert/delete or replace other short sequences as:

 - 6x His Tag
- Avi Tag
- Protease digestion sites (eg TEV, Eterokinase, Fatt.Xa)

or delete:
-N- or C- teminal region of your gene;
-N or C- terminal fusions (eg GFP, GST, MBP, etc)
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PIPE cloning steps:

1) Vector amplification by PCR  (V-PCR)

2) PCR digestion with dpnI (to remove template vector background)

3) Trasfrom the vector into the MACH1 E.coli cells

4) Plasmid extraction from at least 4 colonies and DNA sequencing

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                                            Tips to perform the Vector PCR:

PCR reaction:

My preferred DNA polymerases: Kapa Hifi (Roche) or Clone amp (Takara)

                       Theoretically you can use all high fidelity polimerases that do not add poly AA

DNA template --> less than 0.1ng/reaction 

(higher template amount may result in background colonies with the original template)

PCR volume --> 25ul/reaction are more than enough considering that for PIPE reaction 1-2ul are normally enough and PCR purification is not required.

PCR cycle:

Elongation time --> >1minute/kb also if the datasheet of the Taq suggest shorter extension time to exploit the 3-' --> 5' exonuclease activity that improve the formation of incomplete extension that are require for PIPE cloning.

Do not insert the final elongation time step.

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V-PCR trasfromation in E.coli cells (PIPE reaction)

PIPE cloning do not require PCR purification.

1)  Mix 2 ul of the V-PCR in 20ul of chemically competent MACH1 cells (thermo cod. )and incubate the mixture in ice 30 minutes;

N.B:  If the V-PCR band intensity is very high  (as in the reported picture)  yon can try also to dilute the plasmid 5 times and perform a second trasfromation with 2ul of the diluted plasmid in 20ul of cells because too much DNA can reduce the trasformation efficiency)

2) Incubate the cells 1' at 42°C

3) Transfer the cell in ice

4) Add 250ul of SOC or LB sterile media (with out antibiotic)

5) incubate the cells at 37°C - 180/600rpm (in a thermomixer or incubator shaker) 

6) Plate all the cells in LB-agar plates containing the proper selection antibiotic

(eg 100mg/l ampicillin for pet21 or pcdna 3.4,  50mg/l of kanamicin for pet24 clones)

7) incubate the plates O/N at 37°C

Primers design

Annealing regions à 18-26bp with an annealing temperature salt adjusted (calculated with Oligocalculator)  of 58-62°C if is possible)

Flanking regions –> length up to 60bp. Overlapping regions have to be between 15 and 20bp

Is not mandatory to add flanking regions in both forward and reverse primer to create the 16bp overlapping. It can be done also adding the flanking region in just 1 of the 2 primers. I choose one or the other solution on the basis of the length and Tm of the relative annealing regions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                      A great thanks to  

Roberto Petracca

an amazing supervisor who introduced me to the PIPE cloning

i was very lucky to shave with him many years in the Novartis Reseach centre in Siena 

References: 

Klock HE, Lesley SA. The Polymerase Incomplete Primer Extension (PIPE) method applied to high-throughput cloning and site-directed mutagenesis. Methods Mol Biol. 2009;498:91-103.




                    










 

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