{"id":"doi:10.1021/acssynbio.6c00281","kind":"article","title":"Tardigrade-Derived Strategy for Low-Cost Storage of Cell-Free Expression Lysates","authors":["Meckelburg M","Banlaki I","Gaizauskaite A","Niederholtmeyer H"],"author_count":4,"year":2026,"published":"2026-06-19","venue":"ACS synthetic biology","cited_by":0,"doi":"10.1021/acssynbio.6c00281","arxiv_id":null,"nct_id":null,"source_url":"https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.6c00281","archive_url":"https://space-kitty.com/papers/doi:10.1021/acssynbio.6c00281","updated":null,"pmid":"42319881","pmcid":"PMC13386639","openalex_id":null,"pdf_url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13386639/pdf","abstract":"Cell-free expression systems (CFESs) are increasingly used alongside conventional biotechnological approaches to accelerate early-stage prototyping and are particularly valuable in point-of-use settings. However, their broader adoption remains limited by time- and cost-intensive preparation as well as stringent cryogenic storage requirements. To address this, several studies have explored lyophilization with protective additives to generate stable, solid-state CFES. These approaches had to balance the protection gained with a loss of activity because of the additives. In this study, we present a CFES that contains a tardigrade-derived cytosolic-abundant heat-soluble (CAHS) protein to protect the biosynthetic machinery in lysates from damage during drying. We show that the CAHS protein, without any other additives, preserves protein synthesis activity following low-cost room-temperature desiccation, while unprotected lysates are affected in mRNA synthesis kinetics and translation yields. The diversity of tardigrade-derived protective proteins is a treasure trove for cell-free synthetic biology, in particular, for making CFESs more accessible and portable.","abstract_license":"CC-BY (article license as recorded by Europe PMC; abstract reproduced unmodified apart from markup removal)","license":"CC-BY","is_open_access":true,"retracted":false,"peer_reviewed":null,"categories":[],"details":null,"provenance":"europepmc","attribution":"Abstract of \"Tardigrade-Derived Strategy for Low-Cost Storage of Cell-Free Expression Lysates\" by Meckelburg M, Banlaki I, Gaizauskaite A et al., https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.6c00281, used under its Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY); markup removed, otherwise unmodified.","topics":[{"slug":"synthetic-biology","name":"Synthetic Biology & Genome Engineering","domain_slug":"biotech"}],"cited_in_dossiers":[]}