Voters favor candidates who can really deliver the goods. It’s the same with life scientists who are looking for a dependable supply of protein. But while Americans usually consider themselves limited to two major party candidates, life scientists now have a great many options in choosing the ideal expression system. From large-scale manufacturing to basic research needs, you’ll find all kinds of reliable products designed for specific cell lines, proteins, and other needs.
Possibilities in protein expression systems have reached astounding heights. For nearly 30 years, scientists have been pushing the envelope of genetic engineering, recombinant technology, purification protocols, and characterization. This has involved harnessing the natural ability of viruses and bacterial plasmids. These delivery vehicles travel into cells delivering foreign genes to be transformed into proteins. In research, the ability to produce proteins at will has increased understanding of gene function and the role of proteins and their interactions. Such findings have served as the basis for therapeutic proteins, such as oligonucleotides and monoclonal antibodies.
Perhaps that’s what Paul Berg had in mind when he said, “There is no doubt that the development and application of recombinant DNA techniques has put us at the threshold of new forms of medicine,” during his Nobel lecture in 1980. Recognized for his work in genetic engineering, Berg credited “the growing sophistication about the properties and use of restriction endonucleases, the development of easier ways of recombining different DNA molecules and, most importantly, the availability of plasmids and phages that made it possible to propagate and amplify recombinant DNAs in a variety of microbial hosts.”
Two years later, Genentech, the world’s first biotechnology company, marketed its first product: Insulin. A small peptide, the company’s researchers were able to engineer E. coli into an insulin-producing factory. Since then, scientists have isolated many other genes for which they have developed various protein expression technologies—both cell-dependent and cell-free. As proteins and other biologically based drugs become increasingly common, industry and academic researchers continue to improve the techniques, especially those for producing more complicated proteins whose functionality depend on phosphorylation, glycosylation, ubiquitination, and other post-translational modifications.
Among the biggest of breakthroughs was the development of kits. Making protein expression nearly as easy as stir-and-pour, kits have freed researchers from crude homemade recipes to the convenience of pre-optimized reagents that are pre-aliquoted into disposable labware. You can find vector kits in which proprietary vectors are ready for the efficient insertion of one, two, three, or even four genes. Purification kits are prepared to purify for proteins with all kinds of tags. Then, you can check the purity with mass spectrometers that are increasingly sensitive, versatile, and capable of integration with upstream and downstream applications.
To bring protein expression into your lab, take a look at the list below, and read up on what each product has to offer. Unlike an election ballot, you can choose more than one.
Shimadzu Biotech’s AXIMA-TOF2 is the next generation in MALDI CID MS/MS. It delivers the highest energy collisions (CID with laboratory energy of 20keV) to unlock more information with higher sensitivity and incorporates novel ion gate technology for high resolution precursor ion selection, simplifying TOF-TOF spectra and data interpretation, even in the presence of complex mixtures. An invaluable system for a multitude of applications, the AXIMA-TOF2 delivers increased flexibility, excellent sensitivity, and unprecedented simplicity.
