Expression of hepatitis B virus surface antigen gene in E. coli

Abstract

Three different HBsAg sequences encoding for S region, pre-S2 plus S region, and pre-S2 fused with a portion of -galactosidase have been expressed in E. coli under the control of lac promoter. When the S region containing HBsAg genes were expressed constitutively in E. coli HB101, the growth inhibition of recombinant cells was observed. However, the constitutive expression of pre-S2 fused with a-peptide (N-terminal portion of 현 -galactosidase) was not detrimental to the E. coli HB101 cells. The antigenicity of the hybrid pre-S2 protein seems to be conformationindependent: treatment of 2-mercaptoethanol or 2-mercaptoethanol/SDS did not abol- ish the antigenicity.