This review focuses on the peculiar features of plant cells that allow …

• Summary
• Introduction
• The plant ER: a protein storage compartment
• Oil bodies for the high accumulation and easy purification of recombinant proteins
• Targeting recombinant proteins to the ER without accessing the lumenal environment of the secretory pathway
• The peculiar features of plant vacuoles
• Protein degradation in vacuoles: problems and possible solutions
• Storage vacuoles for protein accumulation
• Conclusion
• References
• Figures

Recombinant Pharmaceuticals from Plants: The Plant Endomembrane System as Bioreactor

Alessandro Vitale and Emanuela Pedrazzini

Istituto di Biologia e Biotecnologia Agraria, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milan, Italy

The production of safe pharmaceuticals at affordable costs is one of the great challenges of our times. Research has proven that transgenic plants can fulfill this need. This review focuses on the peculiar features of plant cells that allow high accumulation of recombinant proteins. The endomembrane system and the secretory pathway of plant cells in themselves offer a fascinating model of protein sorting, and in practical terms, represent the potential for the facile and very low-cost purification of recombinant pharmaceutical proteins. 
 

Source: Molecular Interventions 5:216-225, (2005).