Optimizing transient recombinant protein expression in mammalian cells.

Transient gene expression (TGE) in mammalian cells has become a routine process for expressing recombinant proteins in cell lines such as human embryonic kidney 293 and Chinese hamster ovary cells. The rapidly increasing need for recombinant proteins requires further improvements in TGE technology. While a great deal of focus has been directed toward optimizing the secretion of antibodies and other naturally secreted targets, much less work has been done on ways to improve cytoplasmic expression in mammalian cells. The benefits to protein production in mammalian cells, particularly for eukaryotic proteins, should be very significant - glycosylation and other posttranslational modifications will likely be native or near-native, solubility and protein folding would likely improve overexpression in heterologous hosts, and expression of proteins in their proper intracellular compartments is much more likely to occur. Improvements in this area have been slow, however, due to limited development of the cell culture processes needed for low-cost, higher-throughput expression in mammalian cells, and the relatively low diversity of DNA vectors for protein production in these systems. Here, we describe how the use of recombinational cloning, coupled with improvements in transfection protocols which increase speed and lower cost, can be combined to make mammalian cells much more amenable for routine recombinant protein expression.