Display of human proinsulin on the Bacillus subtilis spore surface for oral administration.

With the continuous improvement of the living standards of human society, the number of diabetics worldwide is growing rapidly. To date, the main effective therapy for diabetic is intravenous injection of insulin, which is accompanied by a lot of shortage such as high cost and side effects. To obtain long-term bioactive anti-diabetic drug for oral administration, we used human proinsulin (hpi) as a foreign gene to construct a recombinant plasmid pJS700-HPI with an enterokinase site Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Lys suitable for digestion. Plasmid pJS700-HPI was transformed into Bacillus subtilis by double cross-over and an amylase inactivated mutant was produced. After induction of spores formation, western blot was used to monitor HPI surface expression on spores. Oral administration to the silkworms with spores implied that the HPI protein displayed on recombinant spores may be digested and absorbed into the silkworm's hemolymph due to the resistant characters of spores and the addition of enterokinase site.