A microfabricated reactor for cell-free protein synthesis (2nd report: translation of natural mRNAs)

Cell-free translation system has an ability to translate genetic information to real materials. Combination with genome sequence analysis, it will constitute a new system for medical and biochemical applications, which is useful to search a novel protein from living organisms. Microtechnology will make it possible to fabricate a miniaturized experimental system. In this paper, the authors show that bacteriophage MS2 protein can be synthesized depending on its mRNA in a 226 nL microfabricated space. Since there are quite a few living organisms on Earth and they have many kinds of proteins, integrated and parallel experimental systems should, therefore, be developed. The authors discuss the problems toward the development of such integrated microreactors for total synthesis and analysis.