Recombinant proteins are of great commercial and scientific interest. Yet, most production methods in mammalian cells involve the time- and labor-consuming step of creating stable cell lines. Production methods based on transient gene expression are advantageous in terms of speed and versatility; yet, depending on the transfection protocol, transient transfection faces some bottlenecks such as a priori complex formation, limitations in terms of transfection and production media used and the need for medium exchange prior to and/or after transfection. Published protocols for transfection of suspension-adapted HEK-293 cells with polyethyleneimine have shown great promise in overcoming some of these bottlenecks, but still require a priori complex formation for optimal yields and limit the choice of transfection and production media. Here, we report successful in situ transfection of suspension-adapted HEK-293 cells with 25-kDa linear polyethyleneimine at densities up to 20 x 10(6) cells/mL in complex media followed by production at lower cell densities (1 x 10(6) cells/mL). After concentrating cells to such high densities, transfection of HEK-293 cells becomes possible in most commonly used media and is not restricted to a specific medium. Furthermore, there is no need to make transfection complexes a priori, a step that prevents inline sterile filtration of the DNA bulk for transfection, an important consideration when scaling processes up to 100 or 1,000 L. Finally, transfecting HEK-293 cells at high density in complex media is superior to existing transfection protocols and doubles yields of recombinant protein obtainable by transient gene expression.

Magnetotactic bacteria are unique prokaryotes possessing the feature of cellular organelles called magnetosomes (membrane bound 40-50 nm vesicles entrapping a magnetic nano-crystal of magnetite or greigite). The obvious energetic impact of sophisticated eukaryotic-like membrane-bound organelle assembly on a presumably simpler prokaryotic system is not addressed in literature. In this work, while presenting evidence of direct coupling of carbon source consumption to synthesis of magnetosomes, we provide the first experimentally derived estimate of energy for organelle synthesis by Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense as approximately 5 nJoules per magnetosome. Considering our estimate of approximately 0.2 microJoules per bacterial cell as the energy required for growth, we show that the energetic load of organelle synthesis results in stunting of cell growth. We also show that removal of soluble iron or sequestration by exogenous compounds in the bacterial cell cultures reverses the impact of the excess metabolic load exerted during magnetosomal synthesis. Thus, by taking advantage of the magnetotactic bacterial system we present the first experimental evidence for the presumed energy consumption during assembly of naturally occurring sub-100 nm intra-cellular organelles.