[Construction, expression and antigenicity of bivalent vaccine candidate of human Helicobacter pylori].

AIM: To construct a recombinant vector containing fused gene of heat shock protein A(HspA) and outer membrane protein(OMP) with M(r) 18,000, from human Helicobacter pylori(Hp) and express the fusion protein in E.coli BL21. METHODS: The gene encoding HspA was amplified from Hp chromosome by PCR. After digestion with kpn I and BamH I, the HspA gene was inserted into the prokaryotic expression vector pET32a(+). After recombinant vectors pET32a(+)/HspA and pET32a(+)/Omp (18) were digested with Hind III and BamH I, the pET32a(+)/HspA and 18,000 OMP gene segments were recovered through agarose electrophoresis, and connected by T4 ligase. The recombinant vector pET32a(+)/HspA-Omp(18) was transformed into E.coli BL21(DE3). The antigenicity of recombinant fusion protein was analysed by Western blot. RESULTS: Enzyme digestion analysis and sequencing showed that the fused gene had 891 base pairs. As compared with gene reported in GenBank, there were 1.15% and 1.26% differences in cloned nucleotide sequence and amino acid sequence respectively. SDS-PAGE analysis showed that recombinant vector could be expressed in E.coli BL21. The relative molecule mass (M(r)) of expressed fusion protein was 51x10(3). And soluble expression product accounted for 18.96% of total bacterial protein.After purification via Ni-NTA agarose resin, the purity of recombinant fusion protein was about 95%. The Western blot analysis showed that recombinant fusion protein could be recognized by anti-Hp positive serum and anti-18,000 OMP mAb, suggesting that this protein had good antigenicity. CONCLUSION: The fused gene of HspA and OMP is cloned and expressed successfully, which lays the foundation for development of protein and DNA vaccines and a diagnostic kit of Hp infection.