Abstract
Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) technologies have enabled inexpensive and rapid recombinant protein expression. Numerous highly active CFPS platforms are now available and have recently been used for synthetic biology applications. In this review, we focus on the ability of CFPS to expand our understanding of biological systems and its applications in the synthetic biology field. First, we outline a variety of CFPS platforms that provide alternative and complementary methods for expressing proteins from different organisms, compared with in vivo approaches. Next, we review the types of proteins, protein complexes, and protein modifications that have been achieved using CFPS systems. Finally, we introduce recent work on genetic networks in cell-free systems and the use of cell-free systems for rapid prototyping of in vivo networks. Given the flexibility of cell-free systems, CFPS holds promise to be a powerful tool for synthetic biology aswell as a protein production technology in years to come.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | a023853 |
| Journal | Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 12 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2016 |
Funding
The authors would like to acknowledge Jennifer A. Schoborg, Erik D. Carlson, and Filippo Caschera for assistance in editing this manuscript. Select figures in this text were adapted from Jennifer A. Schoborg and Erik D. Carlson. We gratefully acknowledge the National Science Foundation (NSF) (MCB-0943393), the Office of Naval Research (N00014-11-1-0363), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award (DARPA YFA) Program (N66001-11-1-4137), the Army Research Office (W911NF-11-1-0445), the NSF Materials Network Grant (DMR-1108350), the DARPA Living Foundries Program (N66001-12-C-4211), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (2011-37152), Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) (DE-AR0000435), and the Chicago Biomedical Consortium with support from the Searle Funds at the Chicago Community Trust for support. J.G.P. is funded by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE-1144469). J.C.S. is funded, in part, by the Northwestern Biotechnology Training Program supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (T32GM008449).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology