Overexpression of the plant aquaporin AtSIP2;1 in Escherichia coli

Sammanfattning: In molecular biology and biochemistry, it is key to have large amounts of the isolated protein at hand when performing functional and structural studies. Unfortunately, the levels of an individual membrane protein in native tissues is often exceptionally low, making it challenging to purify a sufficient amount. A relatively simple and inexpensive way to get large amounts of a protein is to overexpress in Escherichia coli and then extracted it. However, this heterologous expression has also many problems as well as challenges. In this project I employed E. coli in an attempt to express, the plant aquaporin AtSip2;1, which is a water channel normally residing in the endoplasmic reticulum of Arabidopsis thaliana. Due to the limited time of the project I have not been able to test if the protein can be expressed in the E. coli expression system.