Kinesin, a key biomolecular motor protein, can be successfully synthesized by wheat germ from CellFree Sciences
A group led by Assistant Professor Daisuke Inoue (Kyushu University) has successfully synthesised the biomolecular motor protein, kinesin, using wheat germ as a cell-free protein synthesis system and reported its activity. This novel finding is important because kinesin was not only synthesized in abundant amounts, but it was also shown to have a higher motor activity compared to that synthesized by E. coli. More importantly, not only WT kinesin was synthesized by wheat germ, but also several mutated and affinity-tagged kinesins were successfully synthesized as well. This is especially important because it shows that the wheat germ provided by CellFree Sciences is a reliable and fast method for producing wild type, mutated, and tagged proteins in a high-quality manner that will expedite further research.
Title: In vitro Synthesis and Design of Kinesin Biomolecular Motors by Cell-Free Protein Synthesis
Authors: Assistant Professor Daisuke Inoue (Faculty of Design, Kyushu University)
Keisuke Ohashi (Graduate School of Global Food Resources, Hokkaido University)
Associate Professor Taichi E. Takasuka (Research Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University)
Professor Akira Kakugo (Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
Journal: ACS Synthetic Biology (part of the American Chemical Society Group)
URL: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acssynbio.3c00235: DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.3c00235
Image Credit: Daisuke Inoue, Keisuke Ohashi, Taichi E. Takasuka and Akira Kakugo.
