EMBL: new technology for producing multiprotein complexes

Research lead | Development opportunity

A new technology to produce multiprotein complexes has been developed by researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland.

Most cellular processes are carried out in systems that consist of many interacting proteins. While such protein complexes lie at the heart of life science research, they are notoriously hard to study.

Now researchers from the groups of Imre Berger at EMBL and Michel Steinmetz at the PSI have developed ACEMBL, the first fully automated pipeline for the production of multiprotein complexes. The researchers say this will speed up structural studies of protein complexes and make it easier to decipher the molecular mechanisms behind healthy and disease states.

ACEMBL can produce complexes consisting of different types of components, including protein, RNA and other biomolecules. It is currently designed to express proteins in Escherichium coli and will in future be adapted for complex production in eukaryotic cells. This will allow the study of even larger, more complicated protein complexes, including promising drug targets. The system is attracting commercial interest.