A silkworm based silk gland bioreactor for high-efficiency production of recombinant human lactoferrin with antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activities

BACKGROUND: Silk glands are used by silkworms to spin silk fibers for making their cocoons. These have recently been regarded as bioreactor hosts for the cost-effective production of other valuable exogenous proteins and have drawn wide attention. RESULTS: In this study, we established a transgenic silkworm strain which synthesizes the recombinant human lactoferrin (rhLF) in the silk gland and spins them into the cocoon by our previously constructed silk gland based bioreactor system. The yield of the rhLF with the highest expression level was estimated to be 12.07 mg/g cocoon shell weight produced by the transgenic silkworm strain 34. Utilizing a simple purification protocol, 9.24 mg of the rhLF with recovery of 76.55% and purity of 95.45% on average could be purified from 1 g of the cocoons. The purified rhLF was detected with a secondary structure similar with the commercially purchased human lactoferrin. Eight types of N-glycans which dominated by the GlcNAc (4) Man (3) (61.15%) and the GlcNAc (3) Man (3) (17.98%) were identified at the three typical N-glycosylation sites of the rhLF. Biological activities assays showed the significant evidence that the purified rhLF could relief the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced cell inflammation in RAW264.7 cells and exhibit potent antibacterial bioactivities against the Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Bacillus subtilis. CONCLUSIONS: These results show that the middle silk gland of silkworm can be an efficient bioreactor for the mass production of rhLF and the potential application in anti-inflammation and antibacterial. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13036-019-0186-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.