title: An Air-Well sparging minifermenter system for high-throughput protein production.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Over the last few years High-Throughput Protein Production (HTPP) has played a crucial role for functional proteomics. High-quality, high yield and fast recombinant protein production are critical for new HTPP technologies. Escherichia coli is usually the expression system of choice in protein production thanks to its fast growth, ease of handling and high yields of protein produced. Even though shake-flask cultures are widely used, there is an increasing need for easy to handle, lab scale, high throughput systems.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In this article we described a novel minifermenter system suitable for HTPP. The Air-Well minifermenter system is made by a homogeneous air sparging device that includes an air diffusion system, and a stainless steel 96 needle plate integrated with a 96 deep well plate where cultures take place. This system provides aeration to achieve higher optical density growth compared to classical shaking growth without the decrease in pH value and bacterial viability. Moreover the yield of recombinant protein is up to 3-fold higher with a considerable improvement in the amount of full length proteins.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  High throughput production of hundreds of proteins in parallel can be obtained sparging air in a continuous and controlled manner. The system used is modular and can be easily modified and scaled up to meet the demands for HTPP.
authors.forename: Cecilia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Deantonio
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Sedini
authors.forename: Patrizia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cesaro
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Quasso
authors.forename: Diego
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cotella
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Persichetti
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Santoro
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sblattero
mesh_terms: D000388:Air; D019149:Bioreactors / Q000382:microbiology; D001709:Biotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism; D057166:High-Throughput Screening Assays / Q000379:methods*; D040081:Protein Array Analysis; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis*
chemical_list: D011994:Recombinant Proteins