Strategies for rapid purification of fusion proteins: protein targets for drug discovery

摘要

Many biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies engaged in drug discovery are generating tens of thousands of unknown protein targets existing in small quantities that need to be screened for their potential bioactivity. Since there can still be thousands of protein targets identified with bioactivity after initial screening, recombinant techniques are used to express larger amounts of each specific protein prior to any further screening and characterization. To simplify the purification of recombinant proteins, purification tags, or handles, have been incorporated into the protein to allow the fusion protein to be easily purified from cell lysate to near homogeneity. There are many manual techniques that work well in purifying small numbers of fusion proteins; however, the challenge now is how to quickly purify thousands of fusion proteins in an automated, high-throughput operation.