A milestone moment for Protein Science – The expression of our 5000th protein
Within Sygnature Protein Science and Structural Biology, our expert Protein Expression Team is central to delivering consistently high-quality, functional proteins for use in drug discovery.
This week, we celebrated a major milestone in Protein Science at Sygnature Discovery: the expression of our 5,000th protein. Fittingly, this achievement came full circle thanks to Ian Hampton, our multi-system “cell whisperer,” who had the honour of expressing and harvesting this landmark protein. Ian was employee number one at Peak Proteins (the company that joined Sygnature Discovery in 2022), and the scientist who expressed and harvested the very first protein back in 2018 when the team was still in its infancy. Our protein journey began with GN1, produced in baculovirus-infected insect cells back in 2018. Now, years later, our 5,000th protein was created using the same system. This milestone shows how far we’ve come, from those early days to thousands of successful expressions, driven by the expertise and commitment of the team.
To mark the occassion, the Protein Science Cell Expression team gathered at The Bridge pub in Prestbury, Macclesfield for a celebratory lunch. Naturally, conversation turned to the future: who will produce our 10,000th protein, and will it come from insect cells again or one of our other expression systems?
As Sygnature Discovery’s Protein Science department, we routinely use a range of expression systems to meet diverse project needs. These include E. coli (various strains), insect cells (Sf9, Sf21, Hi5), and mammalian systems (HEK293-6E, Expi293F, CHO-3E7, ExpiCHO-S), scaling from small millilitre volumes in plates, up to 25 litres in wave bags. This flexibility underpins our comprehensive Protein Expression Service, which we offer alongside protein purification capabilities or as a standalone solution. Many of the proteins we produce support structural determination or protein based assays.
