Dynamic profiling of amino acid transport and metabolism in Chinese hamster ovary cell culture

Abstract

Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells are the most widely used industrial hosts for the production of recombinant DNA technology drugs [1]. In such processes amino acids (a.a.) are vital nutrients for growth, but also building blocks of the recombinant protein (rprotein). Our research aims to establish a better understanding of a.a. transport in and out of cells, since this could have significant impact on increasing productivity and designing feeding strategies during bioprocessing. There are about 46 a.a. transporter proteins in mammalian cells, the genes of which are presented in Table ​Table11 along with their substrates and all are members of the Solute Carriers (SLC) database [2]. A.a. transporters are subject to different expression profiles among mammalian cells and are grouped into more than 18 systems, based on sequence homology and function.