Antibodies produced by sunlight

The use of proteins in medical treatment and diagnosis is steadily increasing. Many pharmaceutically relevant proteins, such as antibodies, have a complex biological structure with specific posttranslational modifications. Furthermore, these proteins need to be highly pure because of their use in diagnostics and treatment. Therefore, a major challenge is the development of systems that produce highly pure, posttranslational modified pharmaceutical proteins - best at low costs.

Recently, the sunlight-driven microalgae Phaeodactylum tricornutum has been established as an elegant tool for the production of proteins (Phaectory). A major - however yet unchallenged - advantage of this system is the production of advanced proteins with specific posttranslational modifications. A further major advantage is the ability of their direct secretion into the medium, which allows easy purification with low effort and costs. Our mission is to challenge Phaectory as a system for the convenient production of antibodies. We want to take advantage of the excellent secretion and ability of posttranslational modification and make the system accessible to following iGEM teams. [Team:Marburg/Project|Have a look on our project].