Improving Cellulase Production in Submerged Fermentation by the Expression of a Vitreoscilla Hemoglobin in Trichoderma Reesei
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Lin et al. AMB Expr (2017) 7:203 DOI 10.1186/s13568-017-0507-x ORIGINAL ARTICLE Open Access Improving cellulase production in submerged fermentation by the expression of a Vitreoscilla hemoglobin in Trichoderma reesei Jie Lin1,2 , Xiamei Zhang1,2, Bingran Song1,2, Wei Xue1, Xiaoyun Su3, Xiuzhen Chen1* and Zhiyang Dong1,2* Abstract Trichoderma reesei is well known as an industrial workhorse fungus in cellulase production. The low dissolved oxy- gen supply in the highly viscous medium of T. reesei remains a major bottleneck that hampers growth and cellulase production in submerged fermentation. Vitreoscilla hemoglobin (VHb) has been demonstrated to improve metabo- lism and protein production in diferent heterologous hosts under hypoxic conditions, but the use of VHb in T. reesei remains uninvestigated. This study examines the efect of VHb in improving T. reesei performance in submerged fer- mentation. The VHb gene (vgb)-expressing cassette was successfully transformed into the TU-6 strain, integrated into the genome of T. reesei, and functionally expressed with biological activity, which was confrmed by carbon monoxide diference analysis. Compared to the parent strain, the expression of VHb increased the glucose consumption rate of the transformant. Moreover, in cellulase-inducing medium total protein secretion of the VHb expressing strain was 2.2-fold of the parental strain and the flter paper cellulase activity was increased by 58% under oxygen-limiting condi- tions. In summary, our results demonstrate that VHb has benefcial efects on improving total protein secretion and cellulase activity of T. reesei in submerged fermentation. Keywords: Trichoderma reesei, Vitreoscilla hemoglobin, Submerged fermentation, Oxygen limitation, Cellulase Introduction a major obstacle that hinders scale-up of biotransforma- Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant renewable tion of lignocellulose (Klein-Marcuschamer et al. 2012). resource on Earth. Te bioconversion of lignocellulose Strategies that can improve cellulase production will be into liquid biofuels and biochemicals using enzymatic of great value for the efcient utilization of lignocellulose depolymerization with subsequent microbial fermenta- and the reduction of cellulase cost. tion is an important strategy in dealing with the global Trichoderma reesei (teleomorph Hypocrea jecorina) is energy shortage as well as associated environmental one of the most important commercial cellulase producers problems (Gupta and Verma 2015). Cellulase can ef- and has been widely used in a variety of industries, includ- ciently degrade the complex polysaccharide components ing food, feed and biorefnery (Bouws et al. 2008; Schus- of lignocellulosic into monomeric sugars, which is a key ter and Schmoll 2010). In industry, cellulase is produced process in biomass bioconversion (Sun and Cheng 2002). by T. reesei mainly by way of submerged fermentation, Te high cost of cellulase production, however, remains which is an aerobic fermentation process with a long cul- ture period. Tus, adequate dissolved oxygen is required to maintain cell growth and metabolism during the liquid- *Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] state fermentation. However, the high viscosity of the cul- 1 Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 1 West tures severely hinders mass mixing and oxygen transfer, Beichen Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, People’s Republic of China which directly leads to metabolic activity slowdown, cell Full list of author information is available at the end of the article growth retardation and even cell death. Consequently, © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Lin et al. AMB Expr (2017) 7:203 Page 2 of 8 fermentation production of cellulase is hampered (Peciu- uridine was added to the culture medium for TU-6. All lyte et al. 2014). Traditional approaches such as increasing DNA manipulations were carried out in Escherichia coli agitation rate or ventilation to enhance oxygen supply are strain DH5α (TransGen Biotech, Beijing, China). costly and often have little efect on ameliorating the oxy- gen limitation (Serrano-Carreon et al. 2015). Plasmid construction and fungal transformation Te bacterial hemoglobin (VHb) from the obligate aero- Te plasmids pUCVHb and pNOM102 (Roberts et al. bic bacterium Vitreoscilla is an oxygen-binding protein, 1989) were kindly provided by Professor Guomin Tang functioning as an oxygen carrier and transporter (Waka- from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy bayashi et al. 1986). In bacteria (Horng et al. 2010), yeasts of Sciences. Te vgb gene (GenBank accession number: (Wu and Fu 2012), plants (Jokipii et al. 2008) and animals L21670) encoding the Vitreoscilla hemoglobin protein (Pendse and Bailey 1994), the introduction of VHb has was cloned from the pUCVHb plasmid with the prim- been proven to efciently facilitate cellular aerobic metab- ers VHb-F and VHb-R (Table 1). Te pNOM102 vector olism, by which the growth rate and protein synthesis backbone, which contained the strong constitutive Asper- are improved under oxygen-limited conditions. Recently, gillus nidulans gpdA promoter (PgpdA) and trpC termi- examples have demonstrated that this strategy also works nator (TtrpC), was amplifed with the primers TRP-F and well in flamentous fungi. For example, VHb expression GPD-R (Table 1). Te plasmid pNOM102-VHb was con- increased the yields of biomass, protease and exopecti- structed by placing the vgb gene under the control of the nases of Aspergillus sojae in solid-state fermentation, in gpdA promoter and trpC terminator with a MultiS One- which strains encounter oxygen transfer problems (Mora- Step Cloning Kit (Vazyme Biotech, Nanjing, China). Lugo et al. 2015). Paecilomyces lilacinus carrying the vgb Te vgb-expression cassette (Fig. 1a) was amplifed with gene has also been shown to yield higher amounts of bio- the primers M13F and M13R (Table 1) from pNOM102- mass, protease and chitinase under hypoxic conditions VHb and co-transformed into the TU-6 strain with the during submerged fermentation, which improves the plasmid pSK-pyr4 (Qin et al. 2012) via the PEG-medi- value of this biocontrol fungus in practical applications ated protoplast transformation method (Pentillä et al. (Zhang et al. 2014). In Aspergillus niger, secreted metabo- 1987). Transformants were selected on an MM (minimal lites and oxygen uptake were analyzed and demonstrated medium) plate without uridine. that VHb expression technology is an efective strategy to reduce unwanted side efects of oxygen limitation during Analysis of fungal transformants submerged fermentation, and was particularly benefcial To confrm the chromosomal integration of the heter- to flamentous fungi where oxygen transfer to the cell is ologous vgb gene, genomic DNA from both the paren- often limited by the highly viscous broth (Hofmann et al. tal TU-6 strain and the transformants were isolated 2009). However, this strategy has not been explored in the and used as templates. PCR analysis was performed to industrial strain T. reesei until now. amplify the vgb-expression cassette with the specifc In this study, we report for the frst time application primer pairs TF/TR (Table 1). of the VHb expression technology in T. reesei. Te VHb For western blot analysis, the TU-6 and the verifed gene (vgb) was successfully integrated into the T. ree- TU6-vgb+ strains were grown in glucose medium for sei genome, and the efects of VHb expression on the 48 h at 28 °C at 200 rpm. Mycelia were then collected and growth, total protein secretion and production of cellu- washed twice with sterilized water for protein extraction. lase were analyzed. Our study provides an efcient means Equal amounts of mycelia were ground into powder with to improve the endogenous cellulase production of T. liquid nitrogen, homogenized in 50 mM potassium phos- reesei, and sheds light on improving exogenous protein phate bufer (pH 7.0) and centrifuged at 4 °C at 5000g for expression. Table 1 Primers used in this study Materials and methods Primer Primer sequence (5′–3′) Strains and media VHb-F AGACATCACAATGTTAGACCAGCAAACCAT Te T. reesei TU-6 strain (ATCC MYA-256, a uridine VHb-R TTAATGATGATGATGATGATGTTCAACCGCTTGAGCGTA auxotrophic strain) was grown at 28 °C for 7–10 days on TRP-F ATCATCATCATCATCATTAAGGATCCACTTAACGTTACTG potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates supplemented with GPD-R GGTCTAACATTGTGATGTCTGCTCAAGCGG 5 mM uridine for sporulation. Minimal medium (Pen- TF AAGGATTTCGGCACGGCTAC tillä et al. 1987) was supplemented with 2% glucose or TR GCACTCTTTGCTGCTTGGAC 1% Avicel PH101 (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO) as the M13F GTAAAACGACGGCCAGT sole carbon source and used for fungal vegetative growth M13R CAGGAAACAGCTATGACC and fermentation, respectively. When necessary, 5 mM The underlined nucleotide sequence represents the C-terminal 6 His tag × Lin et al. AMB Expr (2017) 7:203 Page 3 of 8 glucose concentration of the culture medium during growth was determined using a modifed glucose oxi- dase method (Trinder 1969). Te dry weight of the har- vested mycelia was measured according to a previously described protocol (Aro et al. 2003). Microscopic images were captured