Expression of an interferon-alpha gene variant in E. coli using tandemly repeated synthetic ribosomal binding sites

A human interferon-alpha 2 gene variant was expressed in Escherichia coli under the control of the tryptophan operon promoter and of a series of synthetic partially overlapping ribosomal binding sites, which control initiation of translation. Variation in the distance between the start codon and such a set of ribosomal binding sites affected the level of interferon expression much less than previously described for single ribosomal binding sites.