The paper:
F.W. Studier, "Protein production by auto-induction in high-density shaking cultures," Protein Express Purif, 41:207-34, 2005. (Cited in 124 papers)
The finding:
While working on the National Institutes of Health's structural genomics project, William Studier at the Brookhaven National Laboratory devised a method that produced up to 10 times the protein yields of conventional techniques and induced simultaneous expression in Escherichia coli cells.
The method:
Studier grew the cells in sync by blocking the entrance of lactose into the cells with glucose until the cells reached a certain growth. Once cells consume the glucose, lactose enters the cells and allows induction of proteins. "It's a great timesaver," Studier says.
The fine-tuning: "You can manipulate the medium and by doing that change expression level," says Brian Fox from the University of Wisconsin, who uses the auto-induction technique in his work on enzymes. "The original Studier medium is 0.2% weight-to-volume lactose, ...
