Development of a Fur-dependent and tightly regulated expression system in Escherichia coli for toxic protein synthesis

Background There is a continuous demanding for tightly regulated prokaryotic expression systems, which allow functional synthesis of toxic proteins in Escherichia coli for bioscience or biotechnology application. However, most of the current promoter options either are tightly repressed only with low protein production levels, or produce substantial protein but lacking of the necessary repression to avoid mutations initiated by leaky expression in the absence of inducer. The aim of this study was to develop a tightly regulated, relatively high-efficient expression vector in E. coli based on the principle of iron uptake system.