Spore Surface Display

A variety of bioactive peptides and proteins have been successfully displayed on the surface of recombinant spores of Bacillus subtilis and other sporeformers. In most cases spore display has been achieved by stably anchoring the foreign molecules to endogenous surface proteins or part of them. Recombinant spores have been then proposed for a large number of potential applications, ranging from oral vaccine vehicles to bioremediation tools, and including biocatalysts, probiotics for animal or human use as well as the generation and screening of mutagenesis libraries. In addition, a non-recombinant approach has been recently developed and proposed to adsorb antigens and enzymes on the spore surface. This non-recombinant approach appears particularly well suited for applications involving the delivery of active molecules to human or animal mucosal surfaces. Both the recombinant and non-recombinant spore display systems have a number of advantages over cell- or phage-based systems. The stability, safety and amenability to laboratory manipulations of spores of several bacterial species, together with the lack of some constrains limiting the use of other systems, make the spore a highly efficient platform to display heterologous proteins