Direct translational analysis of electrophoretically separated DNA using a cell-free protein synthesis system

Abstract

Abstract Cell-based protein production has low throughput and restricted flexibility in process design. For the development of a rapid platform for translational analysis of genetic sequences by bypassing time- and labor-consuming steps of cell-based gene expression methods, we attempted in this study to combine the techniques of gel electrophoresis and cell-free protein synthesis in a streamlined manner. After an electrophoretic separation of the DNAs of varying sizes, DNAs in the gel matrices were directly incubated in a reaction mixture for cell-free protein synthesis, which led to successful expression of functional proteins.