Designing a space bioprocessing system to produce recombinant proteins

Biomanufacturing based in space can improve the sustainability of deep space exploration. Bioprocessing systems to advance biomanufacturing for space applications need to be developed. In a new report now published in npj Microgravity, Mathangi Soundararajan and a team of scientists in bioengineering and space biosciences at the NASA Ames Research Center, California, have developed commercial technologies to design space bioprocessing systems that supply a liquid amine carbon dioxide scrubber with recombinant active carbonic anhydrase. The design workflows encompassed a biomass of 1 L of Escherichia coli cultures using recombinant protein purification.