Improving the Expression of Functional Membrane Proteins in Escherichia coli

Membrane proteins (MPs) account for 20-30% of the genomes sequenced to date and hold great potential as therapeutic targets, as well as for practical applications in bionanotechnology that range from selective nanochannels to solar energy harvesting. To date, this potential remains largely untapped because little is known about their structure and function. This is mainly due to the fact that MPs are difficult to express in normally robust expression hosts such as E. coli. Here we describe folding pathway engineering strategies that improve the yields of functional membrane integrated MPs in E. coli by 3-to-7 fold relative to wild type.