Avaliação de diferentes meios de cultivo na expressão do antígeno 503 de Leishmania i. chagasi em Escherichia coli

Abstract

Leishmaniosis (or leishmaniasis) is an endemic disease with a complex clinical picture that can be fatal without treatment, and its visceral form is popularly known as kala-azar. It is estimated that 900 million to 1.3 million cases, and more than 20 thousand deaths occur annually due to this illness in the world. And Brazil is one of the countries with the most cases of the disease. Although there are long and complex studies in the field, there is no drug that prevents kala-azar. Fortunately, after the advent of recombinant DNA technology, several microorganisms are being used in our favor, and Escherichia coli is the one most used for the production of recombinant proteins. Therefore, this course completion work consisted in changing the culture mediums for the production of the antigen 503 of Leishmania i. Chagasi expressed in E. coli. It was done three experiments, in which two of them were complex medium (2xTY, SB), and the other was synthetic (M9), aiming to optimize the production of biomass and the recombinant protein. The Superbroth (SB) medium had the highest protein productivity – 810 mg/L in six hours -, even though it did not have the highest biomass concentration. Moreover, the M9 medium, even having the worse cell productivity, draws attention due to its specific production as its highest protein concentration was 406 mg/L, value equivalent to that obtained using the medium 2xTY.