Recent advances on host plants and expression cassettes' structure and function in plant molecular pharming

Abstract

Plant molecular pharming is a promising system to produce important recombinant proteins such as therapeutic antibodies, pharmaceuticals, enzymes, growth factors, and vaccines. The system provides an interesting alternative method to the direct extraction of proteins from inappropriate source material while offering the possibility to overcome problems related to product safety and source availability. Multiple factors including plant hosts, genes of interest, expression vector cassettes, and extraction and purification techniques play important roles in the plant molecular pharming. Plant species, as a biosynthesis platform, are a crucial factor in achieving high yields of recombinant protein in plant. The choice of recombinant gene and its expression strategy is also of great importance in ensuring a high amount of the recombinant proteins. Many studies have been conducted to improve expression, accumulation, and purification of the recombinant protein from molecular pharming systems. Re-engineered vectors and expression cassettes are also pivotal tools in enhancing gene expression at the transcription and translation level, and increasing protein accumulation, stability, retention and targeting of specific organelles. In this review, we report recent advances and strategies of plant molecular pharming while focusing on the choice of plant hosts and the role of some molecular pharming elements and approaches: promoters, codon optimization, signal sequences, and peptides used for upstream design, purification and downstream processing.