Translational Regulation of Recombinant Protein Expression in E. coli -A Review

Abstract

The progress made in the advancement and application of recombinant DNA technology has been largely associated with the development of expression systems based on Escherichia coli. Advancements have been made in optimization of E. coli expression system both at transcription and translation levels. Using this system, a large variety of heterologous proteins have been produced for applications in medical, industrial, agricultural and environmental fields. Here the recent developments mainly regarding the factors involved in the translation process are dealt with. The various aspects related to Shine-Dalgarno (SD) sequence, sequence and size of the oligonucleotide between SD sequence and the start codon, the initial 5’-end sequence of the mRNA encoding the protein of interest, codon bias between the target and the host, size of the protein to be expressed and the use of tags to achieve different goals are discussed in this review.