Construction of primary chassis cells with efficient protein expression in Thermus thermophilus.

Background: Thermus thermophilus HB27 is a promising thermophilic chassis for recombinant thermostable protein production, owing to its high optimal growth temperature, which can simplify downstream processing and reduce contamination risks. However, maximizing its potential requires optimized genetic tools and host strains. Key limitations include a shortage of well-characterized strong constitutive promoters and potential degradation of recombinant proteins by proteases. To address these, we established a β-galactosidase reporter system (endogenous TTP0042) to screen for strong constitutive promoters and investigated the impact of deleting specific protease genes on protein expression.

Results: Screening of 13 endogenous promoter regions identified P0984 as exhibiting significantly 13-fold higher activity than the control promoter driving the reporter gene. Constructing a plasmid-free strain (HB27ΔpTT27) successfully minimized 270 kb of the genome; it exhibited auxotrophy for cobalamin (requiring 0.1 µg/ml AdoCbl for growth) and a slightly reduced growth rate compared to the wild-type, while its transformation efficiency remained comparable. Notably, a CRISPR-deficient precursor strain (HB27ΔIII-ABΔI-CΔCRF3) showed a significant (~ 100-fold) increase in transformation efficiency compared to the wild-type, facilitating subsequent genetic manipulations. Systematic knockout of 16 predicted non-essential protease loci was performed. Characterization revealed that deletion of TTC0264 (putative ClpY/HslU) and TTC1905 (putative HhoB) significantly reduced extracellular proteolytic activity. Iterative deletion based on phenotypic analysis led to strain DSP9 (10 protease loci deletions), which maintained robust growth and exhibited enhanced accumulation of the β-galactosidase reporter protein compared to the parental strains.

Conclusions: This study provides foundational advancements for T. thermophilus HB27 chassis development, and genetic tools represent valuable resources for optimizing T. thermophilus as a platform for heterologous thermostable protein production and ideas for antibiotic-free systems.