We pioneer the development of high-yielding cell-free expression systems for academic and industrial purposes, creating extracts from diverse bacteria and optimising systems to achieve high peptide/protein yields (up to 4 mg/mL). Cell-free systems are part of a growing area of research, with a broad variety of applications (e.g., high-value peptides/proteins, high-throughput screening, biosensors, and flexible engineering of pathways). One of key advantages of cell-free is its capability with high-throughput screening using liquid handling robotics.

Our cell-free toolkits spans model organisms like E. coli to non-model species including Streptomyces venezuelae and Klebsiella pneumoniae, enabling rapid prototyping of biosynthetic pathways and gene expression regulation, without the constraints of living cells. We have established automated platforms for scalable biosynthesis and developed a dedicated Streptomyces cell-free toolkit for natural product discovery.

 

Selected Publications:

• Andrew J. Rice, Tien T. Sword, Kameshwari Chengan, Douglas A. Mitchell, Nigel J. Mouncey, Simon J. Moore and Constance B. Bailey. Cell-free synthetic biology for natural product biosynthesis and discovery. Chemical Society Reviews (2025) 54:4314-4352
• Kameshwari Chengan, Charlotte Hind, Maria Stanley, Matthew E Wand, Lakshmeesha K Nagappa, Kevin Howland, Tanith Hanson, Rubén Martín-Escolano, Anastasios D Tsaousis, José A Bengoechea, J Mark Sutton, Christopher M Smales, Simon J Moore. A cell-free strategy for the host-specific profiling of antimicrobial sensitivity and resistance. npj Antimicrobials and Resistance 1:16 (2023)
• Lakshmeesha K. Nagappa, Wakana Sato, Farzana Alam, Kameshwari Chengan, Christopher M. Smales, Tobias Von Der Haar, Karen M. Polizzi, Katarzyna P. Adamala and Simon J. Moore. A ubiquitous amino acid source for prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell-free transcription-translation systems. Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol. (2022) 10:992708

 

Antimicrobial Discovery & Resistance Mechanisms