An automated workflow to screen alkene reductases using high-throughput thin layer chromatography

Biotechnology for Biofuels

Brett M. Garabedian¹  Corey W. Meadows¹  Taek Soon Lee¹  Tristan de Rond²  Joel M. Guenther³  Florence Mingardon⁴  Raya Abourjeily⁴ 

[1] Joint BioEnergy Institute, 5885 Hollis Street, 4th floor, 94608, Emeryville, CA, USA;Biological Systems & Engineering Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 94720, Berkeley, CA, USA;Joint BioEnergy Institute, 5885 Hollis Street, 4th floor, 94608, Emeryville, CA, USA;Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, Berkeley, CA, USA;Joint BioEnergy Institute, 5885 Hollis Street, 4th floor, 94608, Emeryville, CA, USA;Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA, USA;Total Raffinage Chimie, 2 Pl. Jean Millier, 92400, Courbevoie, France;

关键词: Thin layer chromatography (TLC);    Geranylgeranyl reductase (GGR);    Automation;    High-throughput screening (HTS);    Protein engineering;    Isoprenoids;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13068-020-01821-w

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSynthetic biology efforts often require high-throughput screening tools for enzyme engineering campaigns. While innovations in chromatographic and mass spectrometry-based techniques provide relevant structural information associated with enzyme activity, these approaches can require cost-intensive instrumentation and technical expertise not broadly available. Moreover, complex workflows and analysis time can significantly impact throughput. To this end, we develop an automated, 96-well screening platform based on thin layer chromatography (TLC) and use it to monitor in vitro activity of a geranylgeranyl reductase isolated from Sulfolobus acidocaldarius (SaGGR).ResultsUnreduced SaGGR products are oxidized to their corresponding epoxide and applied to thin layer silica plates by acoustic printing. These derivatives are chromatographically separated based on the extent of epoxidation and are covalently ligated to a chromophore, allowing detection of enzyme variants with unique product distributions or enhanced reductase activity. Herein, we employ this workflow to examine farnesol reduction using a codon-saturation mutagenesis library at the Leu377 site of SaGGR. We show this TLC-based screen can distinguish between fourfold differences in enzyme activity for select mutants and validated those results by GC–MS.ConclusionsWith appropriate quantitation methods, this workflow can be used to screen polyprenyl reductase activity and can be readily adapted to analyze broader catalyst libraries whose products are amenable to TLC analysis.

【 授权许可】

CC BY