Molecular cloning, nucleotide sequence, and expression of the gene encoding a trypsin-like protease from Streptomyces erythraeus.

Streptomyces erythraeus produces an extracellular mammalian-type serine protease bearing trypsin-like substrate specificity. The gene encoding the protease was cloned and sequenced as an initial step for investigating its structure-function relationship by site-specific mutagenesis. The cloned gene is composed of an 816-bp open reading frame encoding 272 amino acid residues, suggesting that it is synthesized as a precursor protein containing a 42-residue prepropeptide. In the N-terminal prepropeptide portion, the tract of 30 residues from the initiator methionine has a typical signal sequence for Streptomyces and the remaining 12 residues are thought to comprise a propeptide. The cloned gene was replaced downstream of a strong promoter in a high expression plasmid, pSEV2, and expressed in Streptomyces lividans TK24. The gene product was secreted extracellularly and identified as an inactive precursor which consists of the mature enzyme and the 12-residue N-terminally extended peptide chain. The precursor protein was converted to a fully active mature form by limited proteolysis with alpha-chymotrypsin at the Phe-(-1)-Ile-1 bond. Protein sequence analysis revealed that, except for the C-terminal three residues, recombinant SET is identical with the native enzyme.