Modern technologies in protein production, biophysical and structural analysis

Bioscience Reports themed collection, open for research and review article submissions

In vitro biochemical and structural studies on proteins continue to be pivotal to the understanding of basic cellular systems, disease mechanisms, and towards the development of small molecule and protein-based biologic disease treatments. Such studies require often complex purification schemes to isolate proteins of interest from native cells, or more commonly, to recombinantly express proteins in heterologous systems. Even then, it can be a fine art to purify target proteins to homogeneity, for which quality control methods are important in confirming protein identity, homogeneity and biological ‘state’ or relevance. Developments in established and novel heterologous protein expression systems, 3rd generation fusion tags and new technologies to purify proteins continue to be important to isolate sufficient proteins for downstream studies. The characterisation of novel proteins (and if drug targets, their inhibition) has required the development of new technologies for biochemical and biophysical analysis, particularly with increasing demands of throughput. Advances in protein structural analysis, particularly cryo-electron microscopy and mass spectrometry have allowed the resolution of more complex samples, such as the structural determination of the whole ribosome. Furthermore, the use of proteins as biologic drugs (in particular, antibody-drug conjugates), molecular tools and towards other applications in engineering biology has benefitted from recent advances in non-canonical amino acid incorporation and site-specific modification, alongside novel protein capture and display technologies. Such developments in ‘wet’ protein technologies have been bolstered by significant advances in artificial intelligence approaches, such as AlphaFold and other AI methods that can be used to interrogate huge amounts of biological data.

This themed collection for Bioscience Reports will attempt to bring together transformational advances in recombinant protein technology, including novel computational and laboratory approaches. This may cover optimisation of protein expression and purification; tools for biochemical, biophysical characterisation and protein structural determination; and the development of proteins towards new applications.

This new Bioscience Reports collection will be Guest Edited by:

Dr Christopher Cooper, CHARM Therapeutics
Dr Nicola Burgess-Brown, Structural Genomics Consortium
Dr Mark Elvin, Sygnature Discovery

We welcome you to submit your best original research papers, review articles and opinion pieces to this themed collection.