Team:Washington

The Idealized Protein Purification System: Improving the lives of molecular biologists

Recombinant, purified protein production is a decades-old technology that has revolutionized research in biotechnology and medicine. However, the traditional method of purified protein production is a time-consuming and laborious procedure requiring expensive and specialized equipment. Our project, the Idealized Protein Purification (IPP) system, is an all-in-one protein expression and purification platform built on BioBrick standards that will reduce costs, save time, and simplify procedures associated with recombinant protein production. The key to our IPP system is a novel combination of three subsystems: expression, secretion and display. We use E. coli bacteria that we have genetically modified to be a chassis for expressing your favorite protein, secreting it to the media, then binding and displaying the protein on the cell surface. At this point, collecting your favorite purified protein is as simple as pelleting and re-suspending a sufficient quantity of bacterial cells in an elution buffer. The speed and simplicity of our IPP system exhibits the utility of synthetic biology for developing new techniques that improve upon established practices.