Bioengineers create pathway to personalized medicine

Engineering cellular biology, minus the actual cell, is a growing area of interest in biotechnology and synthetic biology. It's known as cell-free protein synthesis or CFPS, and it has the potential to provide sustainable ways to make chemicals, medicines, and biomaterials. Unfortunately, a long-standing gap in cell-free systems is the ability to manufacture glycosylated proteins—proteins with a carbohydrate attachment. Glycosylation is crucial for a wide range of important biological processes, and the ability to understand and control this mechanism is vital for disease treatment and prevention.