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...
The numbers:
| Lactose concentration | Optical density/culture growth (light absorption at 600 nm wavelength) |
| 0.05% | 4.2 |
| 0.02% | 4.9 |
| 0.01% | 5.5 |
| 0.005% | 5.8 |
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