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The all-E. Coli TXTL Toolbox 3.0: New Capabilities of a Cell-Free Synthetic Biology Platform
Abstract
The new generation of cell-free gene expression systems enables prototyping and engineering biological systems in vitro over a remarkable scope of applications and physical scales. As the utilization of DNA-directed in vitro protein synthesis expands in scope, developing more powerful cell-free transcription-translation (TXTL) platforms remains a major goal to either execute larger DNA programs, or improve cell-free biomanufacturing capabilities. In this work, we report the capabilities of the all E. coli TXTL toolbox 3.0, a multipurpose cell-free expression system specifically developed for synthetic biology. In non-fed batch mode reactions, synthesis of the fluorescent reporter protein eGFP reaches 4 mg/ml. In synthetic cells, consisting of liposomes loaded with a TXTL reaction, eGFP is produced to concentrations of more than 8 mg/ml when the chemical building blocks feeding the reaction diffuse through membrane channels to facilitate exchanges with the outer solution. The bacteriophage T7, encoded by a genome of 40 kbp and about 60 genes, is produced at a concentration of 1013 PFU/ml. This TXTL system extends the current cell-free expression capabilities by offering unique strength and properties, for either testing regulatory elements and circuits, biomanufacturing biologics, or building synthetic cells.
Product Used
Genes
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