Synthelis - Biotech blog

 

Escherichia coli (E. Coli) is the most popular cell extract source for cell-free expression systems. However, extracts from wheat germ, rabbit reticulocytes or insect cells are also commonly used. Other mammalian cell lines are also more recently used for cell-free protein biosynthesis. Since they present different properties and advantages, the source of cell extract will be selected according to the properties of the protein to synthesize, such as the need for post-translational modifications, and other constraints, like yield, costs or convenience of cell extract preparation (Carlson et al., 2012; Casteleijn et al., 2013, Zemella et al., 2015).

Although traditional cell-free protein synthesis is only considered appropriate for small scale protein production, technological breakthroughs made since the turn of the century have drastically accelerated the development of this production platform, making it now suitable at the industrial scale. Previous limitations of the cell-free technology have been addressed: it is now scalable, consistent, robust and cost-effective (Zawada et al., 2011). Yields have been increased, the use of expensive reagents is no longer necessary, reactions lengthened, and reaction scales increased (Carlson et al., 2012), all of which contribute to making cell-free technology an interesting and efficient platform for industrial applications.