|30 August 2016|
USA
New research has unveiled a pioneering system which could revolutionise the biotechnology industry. It would replace the workhorse E. coli – used in biotech since the 1970s – by increasing speed and efficiency of protein production and cloning.
Researchers from Synthetic Genomics (SGI) announced this week the development and extensive engineering of Vibrio natriegens into a next-generation biotechnology host organism Vmax™.
“This work provides a game-changing alternative to E. coli, the organism that has been a laboratory staple for decades, and again highlights the rapid and innovative synthetic biology expertise we’ve developed at SGI. We are in the process of designing and synthesizing new Vmax™ cells that operate at even higher efficiencies and productivity as we move toward a next-generation host for protein production”, said Daniel Gibson, Vice President, DNA Technologies, SGI.
Commenting on the origin of the research, Todd Peterson, Chief Technology Officer at SGI stated, “Despite the known drawbacks and shortcomings, scientists have been necessitated to use E. coli as a laboratory host primarily because there have been no suitable alternatives. We deployed our synthetic biology expertise to develop a new host strain that will drastically improve upon the traditional methods and tools.”
