Membrane proteins are involved in a diverse array of cellular functions and part of many important metabolic pathways. As such, they are attractive targets in the pharmaceutical and bio-based chemical industries. Despite their great potential, many challenges remain before membrane proteins gain widespread success in biotechnology. The two biggest issues are that expression of membrane proteins leads to inhibition of cellular growth and metabolism, and native membrane proteins often lack a desired function or specificity for use in engineered processes. To address these issues, protein engineering and synthetic biology approaches are leading the charge to develop membrane proteins for biotechnological applications. Here, we describe current methods for engineering membrane proteins and optimizing their expression levels in bacteria. We highlight success stories and describe challenges that still face this growing field.

膜蛋白参与各种细胞功能以及许多重要代谢途径的一部分。因此，它们是制药和基于生物的化学工业中有吸引力的目标。尽管它们具有巨大的潜力，但在膜蛋白在生物技术中获得广泛成功之前，仍然存在许多挑战。两个最大的问题是膜蛋白的表达导致细胞生长和代谢的抑制，而天然膜蛋白通常缺乏在工程化过程中使用所需的功能或特异性。为了解决这些问题，蛋白质工程和合成生物学方法正在牵头开发用于生物技术应用的膜蛋白。在这里，我们描述了工程膜蛋白和优化其在细菌中的表达水平的当前方法。