New method increases protein productio thousand times: Proteins are formed by long chains of building block molecules called amino acids, and the production process for medical or commercial applications can be complex, expensive and time consuming.

Researchers have discovered a method to increase protein production by up to a thousand times, an advance that can reduce the cost of protein-based drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics.

Proteins are made up of long chains of building block molecules called amino acids, and the production process for medical or commercial applications can be complex, expensive, and time consuming.

Scientists, including Indian-born researcher Manasvi Verma from the University of Washington in the U.S. USA, synthesize protein-based drugs like insulin by converting the modified bacteria into small protein-producing factories.

New method increases protein production thousand times

Previous research has found that the first few amino acids in a protein's chain play an important role in their production.

In their current study, published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers changed the sequence of the first amino acids and found that increased protein production in cells.

"If you can make each bacterium produce 10 times more protein, it only needs a tenth of the volume of bacteria to do the job, which would greatly reduce costs. This technique works with all types of proteins because it is a basic feature of universal protein synthesis machinery, "said lead author Sergej Djuranovic of Washington University.

As part of the study, researchers made multiple variants of the genetic code behind the first amino acids in the green fluorescent protein (GFP).

The study noted that GFP is a tool used in biomedical experiments to estimate the amount of protein in a sample by measuring the amount of fluorescent light produced.

The researchers then inserted the different gene variants into the E. coli bacterium, generating 9,261 different versions of GFP, all identical, except from the beginning.

According to the researchers, different versions of GFP varied a thousand times from the faintest to the brightest, indicating a thousandfold difference in the amount of protein produced.

Certain combinations of amino acids at the third, fourth, and fifth positions in the protein chain resulted in extremely high amounts of protein, scientists noted.

They added that the same amino acid triplets not only increased GFP production, which originally came from jellyfish, but also the protein production of distantly related species such as coral and humans.

"There are many ways we could benefit from increasing protein production," said Djuranovic.

"In the biomedical space, there are many proteins used in medicine, vaccines, diagnostics and biomaterials for medical devices which could be less expensive if we could improve production. Optimizing protein production could have a wide range of commercial benefits." added.