In Vitro Transcription & Translation kits (IVTT)

The opportunity to make proteins without using live cells has many advantages.

It’s fast to produce small amounts of protein, even from linear DNA. Once the DNA template is made with a few key sequences, such as promoter and start & stop codons, it can be added directly to a master mix, and proteins can be generated pretty much overnight!

As a fast way to test AI designed proteins or mRNA and antibodies it’s a very quick way to enable screening of candidates before going to the trouble of transiently expressing the protein.

It’s scale-able. Just ratio up the DNA and the master mix volumes and it’s generally a linear relationship.

It’s very useful to make proteins that would normally be toxic to a cell. There are methods that enable the researcher to control when the protein manufacture in a cell is turned on but this obviously requires further time in design of the DNA.

Some IVTT systems can also be used to produce engineered bacteriophages more efficiently and can eliminate the need for phage screening and subsequent cloning.1 Artificial cells can be made, and the proteins produced can also be used as biosensors.

In short IVTT systems avoid the need for cell transfection and expansion, saving days at a time, and an easier clean up of the finished protein.

There are 2 types of IVTT kits:

Those made from cell extracts, such as E.coli & Wheatgerm

There are also kits that are assembled from recombinant proteins these can have a defined composition and the kit proteins can be made with a tag for easy removal from the manufactured protein.