P23: Evaluating Streptomyces lividans as potential host for production of heterologous protein

Actinomycetes are widely known for production of antibiotics, though as hosts for heterologous protein expression they show great potential which should be further developed. Streptomyces lividans is especially interesting due to very low endogenous protease activity and the capability to secrete proteins to the medium. As saprophyte it also has the ability to use a very diverse range of substrates including cellulose. Furthermore, a growing array of genetic tools has been developed, while sequencing and annotation is to follow in the near future as various initiatives are in progress.

This study aims at investigating the potential of S. lividans as host for hetologous protein production. Batch cultivations have showed that S. lividans is capable of producing and exporting active protein from the cells. Another attractive feature is that very low to negligible levels of proteases have been measured during the batch phase. An array of model proteins have been used to test the versatility of S. lividans: mRFP, XEG and CelA

Actinomycetes grow filamentously, which to some extent can complicate chemostat experiments, though due to their size, they are less troublesome than classical filamentous protein production hosts. Interestingly, the results from this study show that it is possible to achieve steady state using S. lividans underlining its potential as cell factory for protein production.