Our strategy for recombinant protein purification
Nutritional and pharmaceutical proteins are necessary for human life. In Earth, it is not a problem to buy them whenever you need. However, in space trips or in a hypothetical colonization of Mars, it is no possible to take with you all these needs. Therefore, our project try to use plants as bio-factory in Mars.
Protein purification processes are considerably complex and need equipment that are very expensive and need specialist to handle them. Therefore, the main objective of our project is to produce plants expressing proteins that can be purify in a simple and cost-effective way. The method we propose does not need specialized personal either expensive equipment and in consequence can be use by any person.
Our project use the fact that a) all plants produce starch, b) starch is a heavy polymer that can be easily purified and c) one of the enzymes involved in starch biosynthesis is naturally bounded to starch, the granule-bound starch synthase (GBSS). Therefore, we proposed to produce our target protein attached to GBSS. In that way, the recombinant protein can be purify as easily as the starch granules.