Hi
here are few things to try for toxic proteins/genes
supplement with glucose
either eliminate overnight cultures or delay the destabilization of DE3
lysogens by
including 0.5-1% glucose in the culture medium.

Another is to stabilize the toxic gene during induction.
high cocnentration of antibiotic and replacing the medium twice prior to
induction.
A rough plan as follows

Inoculate a single colony into 2mL TB+ 200ug/mL of antibiotic. grow cells at
37oc until
OD600=0.2-0.6
collect cells (centrifuge 30secor so)remove sup and rsuspend in 2mL fresh
media.
Add a 100uL sample to 8mLTB+500ug/mL antibiotic and grow the culture at 37oC
until
OD600=0.2-0.6

collect cells (1000xg for 5min) and resuspend in fresh TB+500ug/ml
antibiotic cantaining
1mM IPTG.incubate at 30oc for 2h before harvest.
Note:The removal of medium removes the secreted beta-lactamase

The above both suggestions are valid when stability of the plasmid is in
question.It worked
long back in certain situations of a plasmid instability.

like earlier suggestions from Artem choice of promotor etc will be also
crucial.other
things like N-end rule,secondary site translational initation,secondary
structure in mRNA
transcript, instability of traget mRNA etc.these may not be the problem at
all. I am guessing here.
but before going for expensive gene synthesis you should definetly try
Rosetta-gami strains becuase
you know that your protein have unusual codon problems

Just few thoughts, hope this helps.

Padayatti PS


On 1/10/07, Raji Edayathumangalam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

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Hi Ailong,

Hmmm... With MBP tagged, the total size of your expressed product is
~140 kDa. People in my lab regularly purify recombinant proteins upto
160-170 kDa but this can be tricky and need not be amenable in all cases.

Here are some suggestions before you decide to make the synthetic gene:
1) Also try CodonPlus-RIL, CodonPlus-RPIL cells
2) Perhaps your protein product is toxic to E. coli. Try growing in
autoinduction media (not LB) with overnight induction at lower
temperatures (20-25C) without adding IPTG. Search for autoinduction info
on the web. Also, look at papers by William Studier on the same.
3) Not sure if other tags like His tag, SUMO tag might help.
4) Sometimes, the plasmid or promoter driving expression needs to be
changed
5) There are expression vectors for cold-shock expressions at ~15C

HTH.
Raji





Ailong Ke wrote:
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> ***          CCP4 home page http://www.ccp4.ac.uk         ***
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> Here are some off-topic questions about protein expression that I would
> appreciate some help with.
>
> I had a difficult time to express a 90 KDa human protein in E. coli. It
> was fused to the C-terminus of MBP and contains a lot of rare arginine,
> isoleucine and proline codons. The sequenced plasmid transforms well,
but
> the cells have difficulty to grow in large LB media, and no
overexpression
> were observed (I have yet to do a western). Trying BL21(DE)3RIL cells
did
> not help. I guess I need to try the Rosetta cells for the proline
codons.
>
> My questions are:
> 1) How big a protein can E. coli handle? Am I working at the borderline
here?
>
> 2) I understand that rare codons cause premature termination and
> degradation by tmRNA-mediated mechanism. But in reality, do I expect a
> ladder of degradation bands or complete degradation? It is puzzling to
me
> not to see any MBP bands. The MBP vector expresses well.
>
> 3) One can fix the rare codon problem by providing a rare-codon tRNA
> plasmid, or ordering a synthetic gene. Are there cases where the former
> approach failed, but the latter one succeeded.
>
> 4) Can anyone recommend an on-line server to do codon/RNA secondary
> structure/GCcontent optimization?
>
> 4) Can anyone recommend a reliable company for gene synthesis, with
> reasonable $/bp pricing?
>
>
>
>
>


--
Raji Edayathumangalam
Postdoctoral Fellow
The Rockefeller University
Box 224. 1230 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021




--
Pius S Padayatti
Department of Biochemistry,
Structural Biology Division,
School of Medicine, RT-500
Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, Ohio-44106, 216-368-6833

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