• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.61-67
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• 1998

Recombinant human epidermal growth factor (rhEGF) was produced by E. coli BL2l (DE3) harboring a plasmid pYHB101. The production of rhEGF was 44.5 mg/L when the E. coli BL2l (pYHB101) was cultured at 27$^{\circ}C$ for 48 hr in the modified MBL medium containing 10 $\mu\textrm{g}$/L glucose with 10 $\mu\textrm{m}$ IPTG/lactose induction at 2 hr after inoculation. It was shown that lactose is able to induce the rhEGF expression of E. coli BL2l (pYHB101) with the same efficiency as IPTG. In the batch culture system, when induced with 10 $\mu\textrm{m}$ lactose, E. coli BL2l (pYHB101) produced maximum 45 mg/L of the rhEGF at 28 hr culture in the modified MBL medium containing 10 g/L glucose. In the semi-fed batch culture system, the volumetric yield was 160 mg/L when the culture was added with 0.5% (w/v) lactose and 0.25% (w/v) yeast extract in the late logarithmic phase and 94.3% of rhEGF was secreted as soluble form. However, when the culture was added with them in the early logarithmic phase, the volumetric yield was 120 mg/L and 20.9% of rhEGF was found in cytoplasmic insoluble aggregates. It was found that the addition time of lactose was important for production of soluble rhEGF from E. coli BL21 (pYHB101).

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.553-559
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• 1996

We have designed nucleotide sequences of hEGF structural gene to eliminate the N-terminal methionine residue incorporated during the translation initiation step, and constructed recombinant human epidermal growth factor (rhEGF) secretion plasmids pYHB101, and pYHB2 in which pelB signal sequence-hEGF gene was expressed under the control of the T7, and tac promoter, respectively. We also constructed pYHB1 vector which contains rhEGF gene controlled by T7 promoter. The transformant with pYHB101 showed relatively slow growth pattern compared to the transformant with pYHB1. However, we observed that the transformant with pYHB101 secreted rhEGF of 13 mg/l significantly after 5 hr induction with 1 mM IPTG and that the T7 promoter was more effective than tac promoter when connected to pelB signal sequence. The amount of rhEGF was 14 mg/l under the sub-optimized condition.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.478-484
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• 1996

Recombinant human epidermal growth factor (rhEGF) was produced by E. coli BL21 harboring a plasmid pYHB101. The maximum production was 68.7 mg/l when the E. coli strain was cultured at 25$\circ$C for 48 hours in the modified MBL medium containing 10 g/l glucose with 1 mM IPTG induction at 2 hours after inoculation. The rhEGF was purified upto 267 folds by Amberlite XAD- 7 chromatography, ultrafiltration, and DEAE Sepharose fast flow ion exchange chromatography with an overall yield of 66.6%. The purified rhEGF was further separated into two fractions by HPLC. The N-terminal amino acid sequence of the second fraction was Asn-Ser-Asp-Ser-Glu-Cys-Pro-Leu-Ser-His. The effect of rhEGF on the DNA synthesis was examined using in vitro biological assay based on the incorporation of 5'-bromo-2'- deoxy-uridine (BrdU). The purified rhEGF shows no difference with natural human epidermal growth factor (nhEGF) in N-terminal amino acids residues and biological activity. From the results, we concluded that rhEGF produced from E. coli harboring the plasmid pYHB101 was apparently the same as nhEGF.