Bioreactors For Protein Production Research Articles

Rice-produced MSP142 of Plasmodium falciparum elicits antibodies that inhibit parasite growth in vitro.

Many malaria antigens contain multiple disulphide bonds involved in the formation of inhibitory B-cell epitopes. Producing properly folded malaria antigens in sufficient quantities for vaccination is often a challenge. The 42-kDa fragment of Plasmodium falciparum merozoite surface protein 1 (MSP142 ) is such a kind of malaria antigen. In this study, we investigated the expression of MSP142 in a rice system (9522, a cultivar of Oryza sativa ssp. japonica), which was used as a bioreactor for protein production. The MSP142 gene was synthesized according to rice-preferred codons and transformed into rice plants via an Agrobacterium-mediated method. The recombinant antigen was efficiently expressed in rice seeds with a level up to 1.56% of total soluble protein and was recognized by both the conformational monoclonal antibody 5.2 (mAb5.2) and the pooled sera of P.falciparum malaria patients. Rabbits were immunized intramuscularly with the purified MSP142 formulated with Freund's adjuvant. High antibody titres against MSP142 were elicited. The rabbit immune sera reacted well with the native protein of P.falciparum parasite and strongly inhibited the in vitro growth of blood-stage P.falciparum parasites, demonstrating that transgenic rice can become an efficient bioreactor for the production of malaria vaccine antigens.

Plants as bioreactors for protein production: avoiding the problem of transgene silencing.

Plants are particularly attractive as large-scale production systems for proteins intended for therapeutical or industrial applications: they can be grown easily and inexpensively in large quantities that can be harvested and processed with the available agronomic infrastructures. The effective use of plants as bioreactors depends on the possibility of obtaining high protein accumulation levels that are stable during the life cycle of the transgenic plant and in subsequent generations. Silencing of the introduced transgenes has frequently been observed in plants, constituting a major commercial risk and hampering the general economic exploitation of plants as protein factories. Until now, the most efficient strategy to avoid transgene silencing involves careful design of the transgene construct and thorough analysis of transformants at the molecular level. Here, we focus on different aspects of the generation of transgenic plants intended for protein production and on their influence on the stability of heterologous gene expression.