Non-disruptive characterization of cell-free synthesized membrane interacting-proteins with a quartz microbalance*

I will present a new method in which we used a cell-free transcription-translation (TXTL) to recreate the natural biogenesis of membrane proteins and non-disruptively measure their incorporation into supported lipid bilayers (SLB) with a quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCMD). First, I will introduce TXTL and its application in bottom-up artificial cell research. Then, I will explain the QCMD/TXTL workflow with a focus on the compositional flexibility of the SLBs that can be fabricated. Lastly, I will discuss some of the latest membrane protein systems we have tested with this method so far.