Transient and Stable Expression of Antibodies in Nicotiana Species

  • Freydoun Garabagi
  • Michael D. McLean
  • J. Christopher Hall
Protocol
First Online:
Part of the Methods in Molecular Biology book series (MIMB, volume 907)

Abstract

Expression and purification of recombinant proteins produced in plants is emerging as an affordable alternative to using more costly mammalian bioreactors since plants are capable of producing mammalian proteins at high concentrations. There are two general methods of expressing foreign proteins in plants, namely, transient expression and stable transgenic expression. Both methods have advantages which serve different purposes. Nicotiana benthamiana is primarily used as plant host for transient expression of foreign proteins. This system is capable of producing high yields of antibody in a relatively short period of time (days); however, intensive upstream processing is required as each plant must be infected with Agrobacterium tumefaciens cells by vacuum infiltration. N. tabacum is often used for production of stable transgenic plants through a procedure that requires longer development time (months). Although antibody yields are smaller compared with the transient method, the advantage of using stable transgenic expression is that very little upstream process management is required once homozygous seed lines are developed. In this chapter, we describe the basic methodologies for expressing antibodies in plants using the transient and transgenic systems.

Key words

Plant-derived Recombinant Antibody Transient Stable Transgenic Trastuzumab Herceptin Magnifection Nicotiana 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

Funding was provided to J.C.H. from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA), the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC), the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) program of the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (OMRI), and PlantForm Corporation. Magnifection vectors were provided by Icon Genetics, GmbH.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  • Freydoun Garabagi
    • 1
  • Michael D. McLean
    • 1
  • J. Christopher Hall
    • 2
  1. 1.School of Environmental SciencesUniversity of GuelphGuelphCanada
  2. 2.Canada Research Chair in Recombinant Antibody Technology, School of Environmental SciencesUniversity of GuelphGuelphCanada

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