Mechanistic platform knowledge of concomitant sugar uptake in Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) strains

When producing recombinant proteins, the use of Escherichia coli strain BL21(DE3) in combination with the T7-based pET-expression system is often the method of choice. In a recent study we introduced a mechanistic model describing the correlation of the specific glucose uptake rate (qs,glu) and the corresponding maximum specific lactose uptake rate (qs,lac,max) for a pET-based E. coli BL21(DE3) strain producing a single chain variable fragment (scFv). We showed the effect of qs,lac,max on productivity and product location underlining its importance for recombinant protein production. In the present study we investigated the mechanistic qs,glu/qs,lac,max correlation for four pET-based E. coli BL21(DE3) strains producing different recombinant products and thereby proved the mechanistic model to be platform knowledge for E. coli BL21(DE3). However, we found that the model parameters strongly depended on the recombinant product. Driven by this observation we tested different dynamic bioprocess strategies to allow a faster investigation of this mechanistic correlation. In fact, we succeeded and propose an experimental strategy comprising only one batch cultivation, one fed-batch cultivation as well as one dynamic experiment, to reliably determine the mechanistic model for qs,glu/qs,lac,max and get trustworthy model parameters for pET-based E. coli BL21(DE3) strains which are the basis for bioprocess development.