Expression of human lymphotoxin α in Aspergillus niger

  • Nada Kraševec
  • Cees A.M.J.J. van den Hondel
  • Radovan Komel
Regular article
First Online:

Abstract

A gene-fusion expression strategy was applied for heterologous expression of human lymphotoxin alpha (LTα) in the Aspergillus niger AB1.13 protease-deficient strain. The LTα gene was fused with the A. niger glucoamylase GII-form as a carrier-gene, behind its transcription control and secretion signals. Special attention was paid to the influence of different codon usage on secretion of protein. In the case of human tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) a dramatic change of secretion has been observed when human cDNA sequence was used instead of synthetic E. coli biased codons. In the case of LTα such a change of codon usage brought improvement at the RNA level, however, no increase in the quantity of secreted protein was observed, due to the proteolitic activity of the host organism. The estimated yield of secretion of LTα from A. niger into the soya medium was 50 pg l−1 of culture.

Key wordsAspergillus niger LTα TNFα codon usage heterologous protein secretion 
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2000

Authors and Affiliations

  • Nada Kraševec
    • 1
  • Cees A.M.J.J. van den Hondel
    • 2
  • Radovan Komel
    • 1
  1. 1.National Institute of Chemistry, Hajdrihova 19, SI-1000 Ljubljana, SloveniaSlovenia
  2. 2.TNO Nutrition and Food Research Institute, Department of Molecular Genetics and Gene Technology, POB 360, NL-3700 AJ Zeist, The NetherlandsThe Netherlands

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