Characterization of Recombinant Thermococcus kodakaraensis (KOD) DNA Polymerases Produced Using Silkworm-Baculovirus Expression Vector System

Mami Yamashita, Jian Xu, Daisuke Morokuma, Kazuma Hirata, Masato Hino, Hiroaki Mon, Masateru Takahashi, Samir Hamdan, Kosuke Sakashita, Kazuhiro Iiyama, Yutaka Banno, Takahiro Kusakabe, Jae Man Lee

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

The KOD DNA polymerase from Thermococcus kodakarensis (Tkod-Pol) has been preferred for PCR due to its rapid elongation rate, extreme thermostability and outstanding fidelity. Here in this study, we utilized silkworm-baculovirus expression vector system (silkworm-BEVS) to express the recombinant Tkod-Pol (rKOD) with N-terminal (rKOD-N) or C-terminal (rKOD-C) tandem fusion tags. By using BEVS, we produced functional rKODs with satisfactory yields, about 1.1 mg/larva for rKOD-N and 0.25 mg/larva for rKOD-C, respectively. Interestingly, we found that rKOD-C shows higher thermostability at 95 °C than that of rKOD-N, while that rKOD-N is significantly unstable after exposing to long period of heat-shock. We also assessed the polymerase activity as well as the fidelity of purified rKODs under various conditions. Compared with commercially available rKOD, which is expressed in E. coli expression system, rKOD-C exhibited almost the same PCR performance as the commercial rKOD did, while rKOD-N did lower performance. Taken together, our results suggested that silkworm-BEVS can be used to express and purify efficient rKOD in a commercial way.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)221-233
Number of pages13
JournalMolecular Biotechnology
Volume59
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - May 8 2017

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