Benito A, Valero F, Lafuente J, Vidal M, Cairo J, Solà C, Villaverde A
Institut de Biologia Fonamental, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
Enzyme Microb Technol. 1993 Jan;15(1):66-71. doi: 10.1016/0141-0229(93)90118-l.
A simple method for monitoring and quantifying automatically the production by fermentation of beta-galactosidase fusion proteins, making use of the remaining activity of the beta-galactosidase part, is considered. A hybrid protein carrying the major antigenic domain of foot-and-mouth disease virus C1 joined at the N-terminus of beta-galactosidase has been expressed in Escherichia coli. The yield of the chimeric protein has been monitored by flow injection analysis (FIA) during batch fermentations at laboratory scale, and a high correlation between values of product concentration from FIA and from immunological quantizations has been obtained. Because of the possibility of employing FIA in large-scale experiments, and the high sampling frequency, versatility, and reproducibility offered by this method, we propose FIA as a general, simple, quick, flexible, and reliable instrument for both monitoring the yield of recombinant proteins produced industrially, and performing basic research at laboratory scale.
