Environmental and recombinant microorganisms for biopharmaceuticals production

Current, very fast development of genetic engineering and protein engineering (main segments of modern biotechnology) is a good way for commercially production of proteins, which benefit biopharmaceutical, the enzyme and agricultural industries. These products augment the fields of medicine, diagnostics, food, nutrition, detergents, textiles, leather, paper, pulp, polymers and plastics. Proteins with biopharmaceutical application are mainly clinical reagents, vaccines and drugs. During the last decade, the pharmaceutical biotechnology represents the fastest growing segment in the biotechnology sector. Production of recombinant proteins for use as pharmaceuticals, is a multi-billion dollar industry. One third of the biopharmaceuticals has come from microorganisms, such as Escherichia coli and yeast. The selection of expression systems depends on the size and biochemical status of proteins. Large proteins and proteins that require glycosylation are usually expressed in a mammalian cells, fungi or the baculovirus system. Smaller proteins are produced by prokaryotic cells. There are some very useful advantages for prokaryotic recombinant expression systems: it is easy of culture, very rapid cell growth with possibility of IPTG expression induction and quite simple product purification. On the other hand, for very large proteins, for S-S rich proteins and proteins which require post-translational modifications, bacteria, usually E. coli strains are not robust system. Better are yeasts with very popular species Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia pastoris. This article presents the current application of microbes as production platforms for recombinant proteins and its genetic engineering for the use as biopharmaceuticals