Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 1: Contained Production Approaches in Plant Molecular
Farming
Plant Cell Culture
Plant cell lines, mainly from tobacco cultivars, are grown in a way
very similar to mammalian cell lines. In the last fifteen years, pro-
duction of more than twenty different recombinant proteins have
been demonstrated including antibodies, hormones, growth factors,
and cytokines. Purification of the target protein might be simpler
compared to agricultural-scale production.
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The first commercially
approved PMP, a poultry vaccine, is being produced from plant cell
culture (see fn. 18).
Root Exudation
The formation of hairy roots can be induced by genetic modifica-
tion and enable root tissue to be cultured in liquid medium. A vari-
ety of plant metabolites have been produced from hairy roots and
excreted into the liquid medium that makes purification easier. Pro-
teins produced so far include antibodies, phosphatase, and ricin B
fusion protein.
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Moss
A particular moss variety that is very susceptible to transformation
with recombinant DNA is cultured in bioreactors. Proteins cannot
only be secreted into the medium but also - via additional genetic
59
P. M. Doran, Foreign Protein Production in Plant Tissue Cultures, 11 Current Opin-
ion in Biotechnology 199-204 (2000); S. Hellwig, Cell Cultures for the Production of
Recombinant Proteins, 22
Nature Biotechnology
1415-1422 (2004).
60
D. A. Fitzgerald, Reviving Up the Green Express: Companies Explore the Use
of Transgenic Plants for Economical, Large-scale Protein Expression,
The Scientist
,
July 14, 2003, available at www.the-scientist.com/yr2003/jul/lcprofile1 030714.html; D.
Gleba, Use of Plant Roots for Phytoremediation and Molecular Farming. 96
Proceed-
ings of the National Academy of Sciences
5973-5977 (1999); S. Guillon et al., Harness-
ing the Potential of Hairy Roots: Dawn of a New Era. 24
Trends in Biotechnology
403-409.
