Mark Lindsay, Brigham Young University
Engineering
The protein production industry which creates vaccines, cancer drugs, and enzymes for chemical manufacturing and biocatalysis has revenue of over $160 billion a year. However, there are several significant protein production obstacles: high production costs exacerbated by difficulties with protein purification, retention, and stability. By better understanding protein structure and function we can resolve these issues. However, traditional methods of studying protein structure and function are costly and time consuming, taking several days to even a week to study one or a few sites. We have developed a process to study up to potentially hundreds of sites simultaneously in a matter of hours.
The linear expression template cell-free protein synthesis system that we have developed enables us to go from a gene template to producing significant amounts of protein in 3-8 hours. We test the effects of unnatural amino acid insertion at each site and report its impacts on protein activity and stability.
The process we have developed has many downstream applications. By attaching unnatural amino acids to a surface, we can easily purify the biocatalyst out of a solution. This aids in the recovery process, meaning the biocatalysts can be reused. A thorough understanding of protein structure is key in knowing how to increase the stability of a biocatalyst, further increasing its reusability. These innovations will greatly reduce the cost of using biocatalysts which will advance the cause of environmentally friendly production techniques. They will also decrease the cost of protein production for other purposes, such as production of vaccines, cancer drugs, and other pharmaceutical products.