E-Mail IMAGE: From left to right, Prof. Sang Woo Seo, Dr. Jina Yang, Mr. Yong Hee Han view more Credit: Seoul National University On Feb 5th, Seoul National University, College of Engineering (Dean Kookheon Char) announced that Professor Sang Woo Seo's research team (Dr. Jina Yang and Mr. Yong Hee Han (graduate student)) at School of Chemical and Biological Engineering has developed a synthetic protein quality control system to enhance full-length translation in bacteria. This technology is expected to increase the efficiency of the production of biopharmaceuticals, industrial enzymes, and bio-based chemicals. Recombinant proteins are used in various industrial fields from protein drugs such as insulin to industrial proteins such as laundry detergents. Since proteins can perform their functions only with full-length and proper 3D structure, recombinant protein production using microbial cell factories requires several protein purification steps. To enhance the yield of the production process, strain improvement techniques have been developed to increase the target protein expression level or to supplement the insufficient amino acids in a cell. However, since transcription and translation steps occur in the same place at the same time in bacteria, truncated mRNA can be served as a template for translation by ribosome resulting in the production of incomplete polypeptides.