Understanding the yeast host cell response to recombinant membrane protein production

Abstract

Membrane proteins are drug targets for a wide range of diseases. Having access to appropriate samples for further research underpins the pharmaceutical industry's strategy for developing new drugs. This is typically achieved by synthesizing a protein of interest in host cells that can be cultured on a large scale, allowing the isolation of the pure protein in quantities much higher than those found in the protein's native source. Yeast is a popular host as it is a eukaryote with similar synthetic machinery to the native human source cells of many proteins of interest,

Recent Advances in Membrane Biochemistry

“…More importantly, perhaps, for the biomembrane community, they gave detailed information for optimizing growth conditions, and manipulating genes that limit protein synthesis, to effect up to 70-fold improvements in the yield of heterologously expressed membrane proteins [1]. The conventional method for the purification of membrane proteins involves prior solubilization of the membranes with detergent.…”