Engineering of the Trichoderma reesei xylanase3 promoter for efficient enzyme expression

The GH10 xylanase XYNIII is expressed in the hyper-cellulase-producing mutant PC-3-7, but not in the standard strain QM9414 of Trichoderma reesei. The GH11 xylanase gene xyn1 is induced by cellulosic and xylanosic carbon sources while xyn3 is induced only by cellulosic carbon sources in the PC-3-7 strain. In this study, we constructed a modified xyn3 promoter in which we replaced the cis-acting region of the xyn3 promoter by the cis-acting region of the xyn1 promoter. The resulting xyn3 chimeric promoter exhibited improved inductivity against cellulosic carbon over the wild-type promoter and acquired inductivity against xylanosic carbon. Furthermore, PC-3-7 expressing the heterologous β-glycosidase gene, Aspergillus aculeatus bgl1, under the control of the xyn3 chimeric promoter, showed enhanced saccharification ability through increased cellobiase activity. We also show that the xyn3 chimeric promoter is also functional in the QM9414 strain. Our results indicate that the xyn3 chimeric promoter is very efficient for enzyme expression.