GTP Technology improves fermentation processes
Increases use of Lactococcus lactis in biologic and diagnostic applications
Genes-To-Proteins Technology (GTP), a French contract research organisation that specialises in protein engineering, has made significant improvements in continuous fermentation processes with Lactococcus lactis, a promising gene expression host.
Toulouse-based GTP has enhanced its induced expression and has developed a constitutive promoter for continuous fermentation processes in L. lactis.
The inducible promoters used with L. lactis give control over the gene expression but also come with disadvantages, such as overload of the secretion system, an unstable host and having to deal with the inducer itself. The company says its new constitutive inducers are more stable.
GTP’s innovation, originally developed with scientists in academia, covers novel DNA sequences that function as promoters, expression vectors containing such sequences, and host cells transformed with these vectors, in particular lactic acid bacteria such as L. lactis.
These promoters can now be used for the production of heterologous proteins, in particular therapeutic or vaccine-related proteins. The company has filed patents covering the technology.
GTP says lactic acid bacteria are predominantly used in the agri-food industry, but the diversity of heterologous proteins that can be expressed in lactic acid bacteria, combined with the harmlessness of these strains, makes them particularly attractive for the production of recombinant proteins with therapeutic or vaccine-related goals.
GTP/INRA co-authored an article published in May in Microbial Cell Factories giving more information on a functional inducible system.
