Establishing a Cell-Free Vibrio natriegens Expression System

The fast growing bacterium Vibrio natriegens is an emerging microbial host for biotechnology. Harnessing its productive cellular components may offer a compelling platform for rapid protein production and prototyping of metabolic pathways or genetic circuits. Here, we report the development of a V. natriegens cell-free expression system. We devised a simplified crude extract preparation protocol and achieved >260 μg/mL of superfolder GFP in a small-scale batch reaction after 3 h. Culturing conditions, including growth media and cell density, significantly affect translation kinetics and protein yield of extracts. We observed maximal protein yield at incubation temperatures of 26 or 30 °C, and show improved yield by tuning ions crucial for ribosomal stability. This work establishes an initial V. natriegens cell-free expression system, enables probing of V. natriegens biology, and will serve as a platform to accelerate metabolic engineering and synthetic biology applications.