Scientists figured out a way to make the immune‑boosting peptide thymosin‑alpha‑1 in bacteria and then cut it out into its active form, showing it still works in lab tests. The method could let people produce the peptide themselves, but it needs a molecular‑biology setup and doesn’t give dosing or safety info for human use.

Human thymosin alpha 1 (Talpha1) is an important peptide in the development and senescence of immunological competence in human, and many studies have reported the expression of this peptide. In this study, we designed and synthesized the Talpha1 gene according to the E. coli codon usage preference and constructed a 6xTalpha1 concatemer. The latter was inserted into an E. coli expression vector pET-22b (+), and transformed into E. coli BL21 (DE3). After induction with IPTG, the concatemer protein was successfully expressed in E. coli then cleaved by hydroxylamine to release the Talpha1 monomer. Gly-SDS-PAGE and mass spectrometry confirmed that the recombinant protein was cleaved as intended. The bioactivity of the Talpha1 monomer was analyzed by lymphocyte proliferation and by mitochondrial activity in two different tumor cell lines. This study provides a description of the preparation of a bioactive Talpha1, which may prove useful in future biomedical research.