Team:Washington

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

The use of recombinant protein production using E. coli-based protein expression systems has revolutionized the fields of biotechnology and medicine. Although generating purified protein plays a central role in the field of biotechnology, the production of purified protein is a time-consuming and laborious procedure that requires expensive and specialized equipment, and, we believe, is therefore not suited to today's thrifty synthetic protein biologist. Our project, the Idealized Protein Purification System, aims to create an all-in-one protein expression and purification system using BioBrick standards to greatly simplify protein production for synthetic biologists, reducing the time and cost involved in standard protein purification methods. Our method uses a novel combination of two systems: secretion and display. In our method, your protein of interest is fused to two separate tags: a secretion tag and a display tag. The secretion tag directs protein secretion via our BioBricked Secretion System outside of the cell into the growth media. The display tag binds to the Display System which is located on the cell surface. Collecting your purified target protein is as simple as pelleting cells and resuspension in an elution buffer, releasing the protein of interest. Our research exhibits the utility of synthetic biology for developing new techniques that improve upon established practices.