Efficient expression and purification of soluble HarpinEa protein by translation initiation region codon optimization.

Abstract HarpinEa protein can stimulate plants to produce defense responses to resist the attack of pathogens, improve plant immune resistance, and promote plant growth. This has extremely high application value in agriculture. To efficiently express soluble HarpinEa protein, in this study, we expressed HarpinEa protein with a 6× His-tag in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3). Because of the low level of expression of HarpinEa protein in E. coli, three rounds of synonymous codon optimization were performed on the +53 bp of the translation initiation region (TIR) of HarpinEa. Soluble HarpinEa protein after optimization accounted for 50.3% of the total soluble cellular protein expressed. After purification using a Ni Bestarose Fast Flow column, the purity of HarpinEa protein exceeded 95%, and the yield reached 227.5 mg/L of culture medium. The purified HarpinEa protein was sensitive to proteases and exhibited thermal stability. It triggered visible hypersensitive responses after being injected into tobacco leaves for 48 h. Plants treated with HarpinEa showed obvious growth-promoting and resistance-improving performance. Thus, the use of TIR synonymous codon optimization successfully achieved the economical, efficient, and soluble production of HarpinEa protein.