Expression and Secretion of Proteins in E. coli

In the past decade we have witnessed rapid advances in the development of systems for expression of recombinant proteins. A wide range of expression systems, host organisms, and processing procedures have been described. Among these, E. coli remains an important organism for production of recombinant proteins in both the laboratory and industry. This is owing to the fact that only a few organisms can satisfy all the criteria such as high growth rate, relatively simple nutritional demands, genetic stability, ease of product purification, and appropriate posttranslational modification. In addition to the advantage of genetic manipulation being a straightforward process in E. coli , this organism has the ability to accumulate many proteins to at least 20% of the total cellular protein, and to translocate them from the cytoplasm to the periplasm. This makes E. coli an attractive host for large scale production of recombinant proteins. Moreover, production of recombinant proteins in this organism presents advantages for many bioprocessing strategies.