Purification of viral neuraminidase from inclusion bodies produced by recombinant Escherichia coli

Neuraminidase (NA) is one of the targets for the development of new antivirals against the influenza virus. The recombinant Escherichia coli cells, namely the strains BL21(DE3)pLysS and ArcticExpress(DE3) were used to produce the influenza virus neuraminidase. Although the different conditions of induction were tested, the accumulation of over-expressed NA in insoluble fraction occurred independently of these conditions. The level of over-expressed protein represents 26.15 % of the total cellular proteins. Therefore, the aim of these study was to design the procedure for isolation of recombinant neuraminidase from IBs and subsequently its solubilization and refolding to its native and active form. The highest purity of IBs (86 %) was achieved after repeatedly washing for at least five times with 2 M urea. The best solubilizing agent for releasing NA from IBs was the solution of 8 M urea at pH 8.0 with 94.8 ± 0.4 mg/L released proteins. The most appropriate buffer for refolding of solubilized NA was found to be 50 mM Tris-HCl at pH 7.5 (102 ± 24.2 mg proteins) and the addition of glycerol or arginine had no stimulating effect on protein recovery. The determination of non-glycosylated activity of refolded NA monomer (K_m = 0.51 g/L; V_max = 9.73 U/mg; k_cat = 8.76 s^-1) using fetuin as a substrate in the coupled enzyme reaction system was the highlight of this work. This procedure provides a way to produce active form of NA monomer by recombinant E. coli cells.