What are the applications of cell-free protein expression systems?

This system's high throughput protein expression is utilized in applications such as protein engineering, mutagenesis studies, and enzyme screening. Other applications of CFPS include generating proteins for structure-function and biophysical analyses. CFPS is also involved in the production of proteins which are toxic to host cells in vivo, incorporation of post-translational modifications, and expression of proteins with modified amino acids. This system bypasses the need for host cells because the protein of interest can be expressed directly in a cell-free system, allowing the generation of toxic proteins without affecting cell viability. Cell-free systems enable protein labeling with modified amino acids, as well as expression of proteins which undergo proteolytic degradation by proteases. Lastly, CFPS systems can be used as an enabling platform for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology applications.