BioBricks used: BBa_K2205003 (New), BBa_K2205004 (New)

Rationale and Aim

Sarcosine Oxidase (SOX) is an enzyme that oxidatively demethylates sarcosine to form glycine, hydrogen peroxide and formaldehyde (Figure 1) (Trickey et al. 1999). SOX was selected to be an example of a possible solution to one of the 5 problems in biosensor production that we identified - unconventional substrates. We defined an unconventional substrate as a substrate that we have little prior knowledge of but that can be adapted into something with an existing biosensor. SOX was specifically chosen to demonstrate that glyphosate, an unconventional substrate which there is not a lot information on, can be converted into formaldehyde which there are existing biosensors for (Ling and Heng 2010).

As part of our project, SOX was designed to be an ‘adapter’ that could link glyphosate into our framework via a formaldehyde detector module. This concept could then be applied to other molecules that have easily detectable substrates in their degradation pathways. The aim of this part of the project was to demonstrate that SOX can be expressed by E. coli cells and that when glyphosate is added SOX can convert it to formaldehyde to be detected via a biosensor.

Background Information

Glyphosate is a herbicide that works by blocking the activity of the enzyme enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS), which converts carbohydrates derived from glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway to plant metabolites and aromatic amino acids.

We attempted to design a system capable of glyphosate detection. With little information regarding mechanisms of glyphosate interactions with the cell, we could not design a simple system, representative of the majority of synthetic biology biosensor designs, in which a responsive transcription factor was able to affect the production of a reporter gene.

The mining of transcriptome data has previously been used to find responsive DNA elements to a molecule of interest (Groningen 2012). Therefore, we analysed differences in transcriptome data between glyphosate sensitive and insensitive plants. A number of genes were found which were differently expressed. However, it was determined that it is more likely that this differential expression was not due to glyphosate directly, but rather the aromatic amino acid starvation caused by EPSPS inhibition by glyphosate, making these systems unsuitable for direct glyphosate detection. Various other systems we designed were also far from ideal, with high levels of complexity and reliance on native plant machinery.

Through conversations with biosensor developers, we found that this problem was common in biosensor development - large amounts of often unavailable data is required for system design. For the Sensynova framework, we needed a more generic solution to this issue. Therefore, we expanded our search to look for biochemical reactions which we could monitor instead. This resulted in our concept of “adapter” devices which can alter difficult to sense molecules using biochemical reactions.

Design Stage

To ensure the codon usage of our SOX protein was not differing significantly from the average codon usage of E. coli, rare codons were removed from the sequence using the IDT codon optimisation toolto produce high protein expression.

E. coli BL21-DE3 cells have higher levels of protein expression than DH5α cells and so were a more practical choice. This led to the expression of SOX being placed under the control of a T7 promoter due to BL21-DE3 cells producing T7 polymerase after the addition of IPTG.

During the initial design stage of the protein, parts of the sequence were lost between optimisation and sending it to be synthesised into a gBlock. This was not discovered until expression of SOX was induced by IPTG in BL21-DE3 cells and a sample analysed by SDS-Page gel electrophoresis (Figure 2). It was noticed that the band we were expecting was of a lower molecular weight than what it should have been; ~35kDa instead of ~42kDa. It was realised that the sequence in the PSB1C3 plasmid was different to the sequence origin. Therefore a new gBlock was synthesised using the proper sequence and an SDS-Page gel used to confirm that the protein expressed was of the correct molecular weight (Figure 3).

Implementation

SOX was synthesised as a gBlock and assembled using HiFi Assembly. After assembly, SOX was transformed into E. coli DH5α cells and then into BL21-DE3 cells. This was done because DH5α cells are better for transformation, while BL21-DE3 cells are better for protein expression. Colonies indicated successful assembly, which was confirmed by creating plasmid DNA preparations of the colonies and performing confirmation digests to view on an agarose gel using the restriction enzymes Xba1 and Spe1 (Figure 4).

The plasmid DNA preps with the correctly assembled SOX gBlock present were then transformed into E. coli BL21-DE3 cells. This was because BL21-DE3 cells are optimised for protein expression and because SOX was designed with a T7 promoter; DH5α cells do not produce the T7 polymerase required to express SOX whereas BL21-DE3 cells do in the presence of IPTG.

To prepare SOX for testing, cell cultures were grown following this protocol to step 4. The protocol used for CFPS extract preparation [LINK IT] was then followed. SDS-PAGE gel electrophoresis of the samples was done to check for SOX expression. 1 ml of each culture was lysed with lysozyme and incubated at room temperature before being boiled at 100°C for 10 minutes. 20 µl samples were loaded into each lane. At this point, an error was spotted with the size of SOX on the SDS-PAGE gel (Figure 2).

The band was approximately 7 kDa too small. It was then discovered that the sequence synthesised as a gBlock was different to the original sequence found online; parts of the sequence were missing. A new gBlock with the correct sequence was synthesised and the above methods for assembly and preparation for testing were repeated (Figure 3).

To test for the presence of formaldehyde, and to demonstrate this part works, larger cultures were grown following the aforementioned protocols, and the cells harvested, washed and lysed by sonication. 0 µl, 20 µl, 200 µl and 2 ml of Glyphosate at 10 mg/L concentration was added to the cell lysate and incubated at 37°C. Every 2.5 hours the lysate was tested for the presence of formaldehyde with commercial formaldehyde testing strips.

After 8 hours of testing and left overnight, none of the samples had produced formaldehyde according to the testing strips. The testing strips detect a minimum formaldehyde concentration of 10 mg/L, so it was possible that formaldehyde had been produced but that there was too little of it to detect with the strips.

We decided to add Sarcosine instead of Glyphosate to determine whether the part was working. Everything was repeated the same but instead we added 0 µl, 50 µl and 200 µl of Sarcosine at 0.9 g/50 ml.

This shows SOX works as expected, however there is leaky expression as formaldehyde is produced when no IPTG is added.

Characterisation

To determine whether SOX had been successfully expressed after adding IPTG we performed an SDS-Page gel. After inducing, harvesting and washing the cells 1 ml was taken from each culture to be loaded into the gel. The cells were lysed using lysozyme and boiled for 3 minutes at 100°C loading 10 µl into the gel (Figure 3) or lysed using lysozyme and boiled for 10 minutes at 100°C loading 20 µl into the gel (Figure 2).

In both SDS-Page gels of the incorrect and correct SOX sequences (Figures 2 and 3 respectively) a band is present in the lanes that have been loaded with SOX induced with IPTG.

Figure 5 shows that SOX works as expected, producing formaldehyde, however formaldehyde is produced even when SOX expression has not been induced with IPTG, indicating leaky expression.

Conclusions and Future Work

E. coli cells naturally have the C-P lyase pathway which degrades glyphosate into sarcosine. The fact that no formaldehyde was produced when glyphosate was added, but was when sarcosine was added, indicates that we have not overexpressed the C-P lyase pathway enough to produce enough sarcosine for SOX to convert into formaldehyde to be detected.

References

Ling YP, Heng LY (2010). A Potentiometric Formaldehyde Biosensor Based on Immobilization of Alcohol Oxidase on Acryloxysuccinimide-modified Acrylic Microspheres. Sensors 10:9963-9981.

Trickey P, Wagner MA, Jorns MS, Mathews FS (1999). Monomeric sarcosine oxidase: structure of a covalently flavinylated amine oxidizing enzyme. Structure 7:331-345.