The cell-free protein synthesis system from wheat germ.

The wheat-germ cell-free protein synthesis system had been one of the most efficient eukaryotic cell-free systems since it was first developed in 1964. However, radio-labeled amino acids had long been essential for detection of the products. Since the discovery of a method for prevention of the contamination by a protein synthesis inhibitor originated from endosperm, the wheat cell-free system has found a wide variety of applications in postgenomic high-throughput screening, structural biology, medicine, and so on. In this chapter, we describe a method for preparation of the cell-free extract and a standard protein synthesis method, as the methods for the applications are found in later chapters.