| Abstract [eng] |
Solubility of proteins is an immensely important parameter for structural biologists, pharmaceutical industry and general scientist who work with proteins. In biotechnology, protein solubility can often be improved by optimizing the amino acid sequence of the target protein. Yet, currently used protein solubility assays are slow and tedious, making the screening for improved protein variants and conditions yielding improved solubility highly inefficient. Therefore, in this work, a high-throughput protein solubility assay was designed and experimentally validated. The developed assay is based on droplet microfluidics and a previously described low-throughput in vivo GFP complementation method. Proof of concept results of the assay showed that soluble and insoluble proteins can be discriminated with a 5.2-fold fluorescence signal intensity difference. The developed system provides a way to quickly analyze the solubility of large libraries of proteins. |
