Pilot Plant - Curiosity

[Linden]

Hey guys,

Does anyone know how inducers are used in a pilot plant, or if they are used at all? Let's say I have an E. coli with an inducible promoter, for example, ParaBAD or Plac, In a pilot plant it would be required a large amount of Arabinose or IPTG. Is it economically viable? Does it work?

Thanks!

[Bryan Jones]

IPTG is an expensive analog of lactose. If you are cultivating at scale, using lactose is much more cost effective from my understanding. IPTG is handier for small scale stuff since it's more stable as it isn't metabolized by E. coli.

[Nathan McCorkle]

Seems like IPTG might only be useful for protoplasts... not sure on
the specifics, but it was mentioned in a paper I just browsed through:

A steroid-inducible gene expression system for plant cells
MARK SCHENA, ALAN M. LLOYD, AND RONALD W. DAVIS
August 8, 1991
http://www.pnas.org/content/88/23/10421.full.pdf


In another paper, which I couldn't get, it says:
"
Here, protocols will be presented to work with five different
inducible systems: AlcR/AlcA (ethanol inducible); GR fusions, GVG, and
pOp/LhGR (dexamethasone inducible); XVE/OlexA (β-estradiol inducible);
and heat shock induction.
"

Inducible Gene Expression Systems for Plants
Lorenzo Borghi
Date: 28 Jun 2010
http://rd.springer.com/protocol/10.1007%2F978-1-60761-765-5_5


Here's a paper which looks good too, and I could get the PDF:
Promoters that respond to chemical inducers
Christiane Gatz and Ingo Lenk
1998

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1360138598012874/1-s2.0-S1360138598012874-main.pdf?_tid=ed2dfde2-4118-11e5-b0e3-00000aab0f02&acdnat=1439401281_c1f7f25c259b4ef1afbf135734cb119f