This NSF award by the Chemical and Biological Separations program supports work by Professors Wilfred Chen and Rachel Chen at University of California, Riverside and Georgia Institute of Technology, respectively, to develop an integrated platform for the extracellular secretion of affinity tagged proteins and their non-chromatographic purification. The integration of the development of genetically engineered capturing scaffolds with protein secretion represents a unique effort that expands the fundamental development of protein engineering with the implementation of purification technology.
The proposed research will provide a flexible platform for the direct purification of mature authentic proteins from the growth medium while retaining the high specificity of the affinity-based interaction. The integrated platform is expected to simplify and lower the cost of protein production and can be easily adaptable for any affinity tagged protein of interest. This research will combine the expertise of the two PIs in order to provide a proof of concept study for the implementation of this transformative technology for protein purification. Moreover, graduate students participating in this research will gain an integrated perspective of the important interfaces and synergies connecting biochemistry, modern genetics, and process engineering.
