Successful development of a screening method in Bacillus

The R&D enzyme development team at c-LEcta has succeeded in performing enzyme screenings on the basis of a Bacillus platform. Until now, screenings were performed primarily in E. coli. However, if industrial production of the target enzyme in Bacillus is desired, running a screen in this strain is best otherwise the screening results may not be transferable if the expression host is changed. And some enzymes cannot be functionally expressed in E. coli, so an alternative screening system like Bacillus is mandatory to optimize such enzymes.

To develop the screening system, the research team at c-LEcta first optimized the transformation protocols to obtain several hundred thousand clones. These clones required developing a cultivation protocol compatible with microtiter plates to allow for a reproducible, uniform expression of target proteins. Now that the Bacillus screening system developed at c-LEcta has been successfully implemented, several thousand enzyme variants can be screened within a week.

The Bacillus screening system was used successfully for the first time in one of c-LEcta’s development projects with impressive results. All technical project aims were reached so that this product development will now advance to enzyme production process development work.

In future enzyme engineering projects, the use of Bacillus as a screening host also facilitates the engineering of those enzymes that cannot be expressed in E. coli, such as many hydrolases like nucleases or proteases.