The Oxford Protein Production Facility-UK

Proteins are essential components of all living cells. They comprise chains of amino acids coded for by specific DNA sequences and fold into three dimensional structures, that determine their function, for example as biological catalysts. Therefore, understanding protein structure and function is key to exploiting the information generated from sequencing of the human genome and in particular those of many human pathogens. Knowledge of individual proteins has made a major contribution to the development of a number of important drugs, e.g. Zanamivir (influenza neuraminidase inhibitor), Lapatinib (kinase inhibitor), Darunavir (HIV protease inhibitor). However, high throughput DNA sequencing continues to add to the database of known proteins at a rate that far exceeds our capacity to decipher their function. Therefore, accelerating the production of recombinant proteins is key to closing the gap between the acquisition of protein sequences and the determination of their structure and function. In response to this challenge, the Oxford Protein Production Facility will provide infrastructure to underpin the study of proteins on different length and time scales from atomic resolution (x-ray crystallography) to whole cell systems (optical microscopy).