Secretory Expression of YY(3-36) Peptide in E. coli
Obesity is the prime suspect in a wide frequency of diabetes type II and cardiovascular diseases worldwide. Recombinant YY (tyrosine-tyrosine) peptide is a locally acting hormone, controlling secretion in the digestive tract. Interestingly, it was later shown that a truncated version of YY peptide, YY(3-36) peptide, has the potential as an important biopharmaceutical in a fight against obesity. This peptide has shown promising results in human clinical experiments in appetite reduction in human experiments. To develop an economical expression system for large-scale production of the peptide in gram-negative bacteria, we have developed a chimeric gene for extracellular expression of this peptide with the assistance of signal sequence of asparaginase II from Escherichia coli. This system has the advantage of producing the complete sequence of YY(3-36) without any extra tags that require further removal with the assistance of expensive specific proteases and reduce the downstream steps significantly. Our results pave the way for the recombinant production of YY(3-36) peptide and further proves the efficacy of asparaginase II signal sequence as a communicator of foreign peptides and proteins into extracellular space of E. coli.