Use of tandem affinity-buffer exchange chromatography online with native mass spectrometry for optimizing overexpression and purification of recombinant proteins.

Abstract Purification of recombinant proteins typically entails overexpression in heterologous systems and subsequent chromatography-based isolation. While denaturing sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis is routinely used to screen a variety of overexpression conditions (e.g., host, medium, inducer concentration, post-induction temperature and/or incubation time) and to assess the purity of the final product, its limitations, including aberrant protein migration due to compositional eccentricities or incomplete denaturation, often preclude firm conclusions regarding the extent of overexpression and/or purification. Therefore, we recently reported an automated liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry-based strategy that couples immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) with size exclusion-based online buffer exchange (OBE) and native mass spectrometry (nMS) to directly analyze cell lysates for the presence of target proteins. IMAC-OBE-nMS can be used to assess whether target proteins (1) are overexpressed in soluble form, (2) bind and elute from an IMAC resin, (3) oligomerize, and (4) have the expected mass. Here, we use four poly-His-tagged proteins to demonstrate the potential of IMAC-OBE-nMS for expedient optimization of overexpression and purification conditions for recombinant protein production.