Our mission is to provide the possibility of producing, purifying and characterizing proteins from insect and mammalian cells at a small to medium scale (between 1µg and 1g) both as a service (we do all, you pay) and as a self-service (you only pay usage fees for the machines that you need and operate yourself). The main equipment that we offer and that you typically would want to use are:

1. Shaking incubators for insect and mammalian cells (WAVE and conventional spinning flasks)
2. Liquid chromatography devices for protein purification (Äkta Avant 25 and Äkta Explorer)
3. Isothermal calorimeter (PEAK-ITC) for the characterization of protein interactions

Protein production in insect and mammalian cells

We are using stably transfected insect (S2, Sf9, HighFive) and mammalian cells (CHO, 293F) for protein production. Cells are grown in suspension culture, either in bottles or in the WAVE reactor. We can grow up to 10 litres of insect cells and X liters of mammalian cells in one production cycle. According to our comparisons with insect cell cultures in 1-liter Erlenmeyer flasks, the WAVE system doesn't offer yield or quality advantages, but provides the same production capacity at a much smaller footprint.

Purification

The Äkta Avant 25 Chromatography System is one of the more sophisticated HPLC/FPLC chromatography systems from GE Healthcare's Äkta series. In 2015, it supplemented our 20 year old Äkta Explorer. It is located in room A516a1 next to Kari Alitalo's laboratory in the Trans­la­tional Can­cer Medicine Program in the fifth floor of the Biomedium Helsinki.

The Äkta Avant features an internal, cooled fraction collector and sample application pump. It is controlled from a Windows 7 computer using Unicorn 7 software. Remote operation and administration is possible either via via Windows Remote Desktop or a remote client for Unicorn.

The control computer is university IT-managed and login works with your usual username/password. If you are familiar with FPLC, you may use the machine after a short introduction by the maintainer. Reservations for the machine are done online. Access to the reservation server is only possible from within the Helsinki University network and requires login with your university username/password.

Protein Characterization

Proteins interactions are at the core of protein funtion. We have recently aquired the (PEAQ-iTC isothermal calorimeter (ITC) in order to offer true label-free detection of protein interactions in solution. In a nutshell the device detects the tiny amount of heat that is released when two proteins interact.