Development of an improved Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis TAC125 strain for recombinant protein secretion at low temperature

Background  

In a previous paper, we reported the accomplishment of a cold gene-expression system for the recombinant secretion of heterologous proteins in Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis TAC125. This system makes use of the psychrophilic α-amylase from P. haloplanktis TAB23 as secretion carrier, and allows an effective extra-cellular addressing of recombinant proteins. However, Pseudoalteromonales are reported to secrete a wide range of extra-cellular proteases. This feature works against the efficiency of the cold-adapted secretion system, because of the proteolytic degradation of recombinant products. The aim of this study is the construction of a P. haloplanktis TAC125 mutant strain with reduced extra-cellular proteolytic activity.