A study of the compartment size dependency of the protein synthesis using a cell-free translation system

我们利用石英玻璃微室研究了蛋白质合成反应的室室大小依赖性。通过引入玻璃腔，与聚二甲基硅氧烷（PDMS）微腔相比，合成的蛋白质浓度显著提高。PDMS室的浓度低于检测限，而玻璃室的反应率为41%。在玻璃腔中进行不同反应顺序的无细胞蛋白质合成反应时，尽管合成反应是由恒定的DNA拷贝数启动的，但反应动力学受腔室大小的影响很大。我们能够观察到高阶反应的特性，并发现了使用真实生物分子进行高阶反应的最佳隔间体积的存在。

We investigated the compartment size dependency of the protein synthesis reaction using quartz-glass microchambers. By introducing the glass chamber, the concentration of the synthesized protein was significantly improved compared to that in the poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microchamber. The concentration was below the detection limit in the PDMS chambers, whereas the glass chambers yielded 41% of the bulk reaction. When the cell-free protein synthesis reaction with different reaction orders was conducted in glass chambers, the reaction dynamics was largely affected by the chamber size although the synthesis reaction was initiated from a constant copy number of DNA. We were able to observe the properties specific to the high order reaction and found the presence of an optimum compartment volume for a high-order reaction using real biological molecules.