Engineering of a microbial cell factory for the extracellular production of catalytically active phospholipase a₂ of streptomyces violaceoruber

Phospholipase A₂ (PLA₂) from Streptomyces violaceoruber is a lipolytic enzyme used in a wide range of industrial applications including production of lysolecithins and enzymatic degumming of edible oils. We have therefore investigated expression and secretion of PLA₂ in two workhorse microbes, Pichia pastoris and Escherichia coli. The PLA₂ was produced to an activity of 0.517 ± 0.012 U/ml in the culture broth of the recombinant P. pastoris. On the other hand, recombinant E. coli BL21 star (DE3), overexpressing the authentic PLA₂ (P-PLA₂), showed activity of 17.0 ± 1.3 U/ml in the intracellular fraction and 21.7 ± 0.7 U/ml in the culture broth. The extracellular PLA₂ activity obtained with the recombinant E. coli system was 3.2-fold higher than the corresponding value reached in a previous study, which employed recombinant E. coli BL21 (DE3) overexpressing codon-optimized PLA₂. Finally, we observed that the extracellular PLA₂ from the recombinant E. coli P-PLA₂ culture was able to hydrolyze 31.1 g/l of crude soybean lecithin, an industrial substrate, to a conversion yield of approximately 95%. The newly developed E. coli-based PLA₂ expression system led to extracellular production of PLA₂ to a productivity of 678 U/l·h, corresponding to 157-fold higher than that obtained with the P. pastoris-based system.