Strategies of Bacterial Over Expression of Membrane Transporters Relevant in Human Health: The Successful Case of the Three Members of OCTN Subfamily

The OCTN subfamily includes OCTN1, 2, and 3 which are structurally and functionally related. These transporters are involved in maintenance of the carnitine homeostasis, which is essential in mammals for fatty acid β-oxidation, VLDL assembly, post-translational modifications, and other essential functions. Indeed, defects of these transporters lead to severe pathologies. OCTN1 and OCTN2 are expressed in many human tissues, while OCTN3 gene has been identified only in mouse and rat. The transporters mediate transport of carnitine and other substrates with different efficiencies and mechanisms. In order to over express the three proteins, a screening of many combinations of E. coli strains with plasmid constructs has been conducted. Only Rosetta(DE3) or Rosettagami2(DE3) gave significant expression. Higher protein amounts were firstly obtained with pET-41a(+) or pGEX-4T1 carrying fusion protein tags which required additional purification passages. Vectors carrying only a 6His tag, suitable for single passage purification, were preferred even though they lead to lower initial expression levels. Expressions were then increased optimizing several critical parameters. hOCTN1 was obtained with pH6EX3 in RosettaGami2(DE3)pLysS. hOCTN2 and mOCTN3 were obtained using pET-21a(+) in Rosetta(DE3). In particular, hOCTN2 was expressed only after codon bias, substituting the second triplet CGG with AAA (R2K mutant). The best growth conditions for hOCTN1 and mOCTN3 were 28 °C and 6 h of induction, while 4 h of induction for hOCTN2R2K. The proteins collected in the insoluble fraction of cell lysates, solubilized with sarkosyl, were purified by Ni-chelating chromatography. Final yield was 2.0, 3.0, or 3.5 mg/l of cell culture for mOCTN3, hOCTN1, or hOCTN2R2K. The data indicated that, in spite of the close evolutionary relations, several factors play different critical roles in bacterial expression of the three proteins, thus general criteria cannot be underlined. However, the strategy of dealing with related proteins revealed to be finally successful for over expressing all the three subfamily members.