Fish eggs as bioreactors: the production of bioactive luteinizing hormone in transgenic trout embryos

Abstract

We demonstrated the production of goldfish luteinizing hormone (gfLH) by the use of 4-day-old rainbow trout embryos as novel bioreactors. This expression system has several advantages: target proteins can be rapidly expressed at low cost, and recombinant proteins can be synthesized at low temperatures and can undergo complex post-translational modifications (PTMs). An expression vector containing gfLH cDNA was microinjected into fertilized trout eggs. After 4 days of incubation at 10 degrees C, transgenic embryos were harvested and glycosylated recombinant gfLH was recovered, which stimulated testosterone production in testicular fragments from the goldfish. This is the first report on the successful production of bioactive recombinant gonadotropin originated from cyprinid. Further, these results demonstrate that trout-embryo bioreactors are a potentially powerful tool for the production of functional recombinant proteins.