VPB 321: Animal Biotechnology (2+1)

PROKARYOTIC PROTEIN EXPRESSION SYSTEMS

• Prokaryotic recombinant protein expression systems have several advantages.
• Ease of culture, and very rapid cell growth.
• Expression can be induced easily in bacterial protein expression systems using IPTG.
• Purification is quite simple in prokaryotic expression systems and there are several commercial kits available for recombinant protein expression.
• On the other hand, if the expressed proteins have to be used for functional or enzymatic studies, prokaryotic systems are a problem as most proteins become insoluble in inclusion bodies and are very difficult to recover as functional proteins.
• Furthermore, most if not all post-translational modifications are not added by bacteria and therefore the recombinant protein of interest may not be functional. Enzymatic studies thus may be unfruitful.