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The extremely high level expression of human serum albumin in the milk of transgenic mice

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Abstract

The recombinant production of human serum albumin has been challenging due to the low unit price and huge amount needed, for the commercial production of rhSA at an economically feasible level, It will be well worth the effort to exploit new method for the extremely high level expression of rhSA. To this end, here a hybrid gene locus strategy was employed, a 37 Kb mWAP-hSA hybrid gene locus was constructed and used as mammary gland specific expression vector, in which the 3 Kb genomic coding sequence in the 24 Kb mouse whey acidic protein (mWAP) gene locus was substituted by the 16 Kb genomic coding sequence of human serum albumin (hSA), exactly from the start codon to the end codon. Corresponding transgenic mice were generated and rhSA was secreted into the milk at an extremely high level of 11.9 g/L. Our transgenic mice carrying the mWAP-hSA hybrid gene locus represent a model system for the cost-effective production of human serum albumin.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by China national high-technology development project grant 2011AA100607; and the China major national science and technology project grant 2011zx08006-002.

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Correspondence to Hongxing Chen.

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Xiaojie Wu, Yanli Lin and Fuyin Xiong contributed equally to this work.

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Wu, X., Lin, Y., Xiong, F. et al. The extremely high level expression of human serum albumin in the milk of transgenic mice. Transgenic Res 21, 1359–1366 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-012-9612-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-012-9612-4

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