Scientists develop multiprotein production method
European researchers have created a new way of manufacturing groups of different kinds of proteins, which they claim is faster than traditional genetic engineering systems.
European researchers have created a new way of manufacturing groups of different kinds of proteins, which they claim is faster than traditional genetic engineering systems.
A group of scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), in Heidelberg, Germany, and colleagues in Britain, France, Switzerland and Sweden have called their discovery "the first fully automated pipeline for the production of multiprotein complexes", or ACEMBL, said the European Commission.
The research, part-funded by the EU, could open up avenues for the discovery of drug targets, according to the European Commission.
The scientists are using "recombineering" (recombinogenic engineering) instead of conventional genetic engineering, which requires additional intermediate steps and a well-defined section of the DNA strand to be replaced.
The ACEMBL system can produce complexes with a variety of components, such as proteins and ribonucleic acid (RNA). A paper was recently published on the work in the journal Nature Methods.