Wheat germ cell-free protein production system for post-genomic research.

Genomic information becomes useful knowledge only when the structures and functions of gene products are understood. In spite of a vast array of analytical tools developed for biological studies in recent years, producing proteins at will is still a bottleneck in post-genomic studies. The cell-free protein production system we developed using wheat embryos has enabled us to produce high quality proteins for genome-wide functional and structural analyses and at the same time circumvent almost all the limitations, such as biohazards and costs, that have hampered conventional cell-free protein synthesis systems. In the present article, we introduce examples of our new wheat germ cell-free protein production system and its application to functional and structural analyses, with the focus on the former.