US Patent 7858339 Process for bacterial production of polypeptides

Refractile particles containing a heterologous polypeptide as an insoluble aggregate are recovered from bacterial periplasm. The process involves culturing bacterial cells so as to express nucleic acid encoding phage lysozyme and nucleic acid encoding the heterologous polypeptide under separate promoters, disrupting the cells mechanically to release the phage lysozyme so as to release refractile particles from the bacterial cellular matrix, and recovering the released refractile particles from the periplasm. Chloroform is not used in any step and the recovery step minimizes co-recovery of cellular debris with the released refractile particles.