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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Biotechnology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1453930
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances and Horizons in Plant Molecular Farming: Pathways to Sustainable Biopharmaceuticals and Beyond View all articles

Improving transient expression in N. benthamiana by suppression of the Nb-SABP2 and Nt-COI1 plant defence response related genes

Provisionally accepted
Lilya Kopertekh Lilya Kopertekh *
  • Institute for Biosafety in Plant Biotechnology, Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Julius Kühn-Institute, Quedlinburg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Currently transient expression is one of the preferred plant-based technologies for recombinant protein manufacturing, particularly in respect to pharmaceutically relevant products. Modern hybrid transient expression systems combine the features of Agrobacterium tumefaciens and viral vectors. However, host plant reaction to Agrobacterium-mediated delivery of gene of interest can negatively affect foreign protein accumulation. In this study, we investigated whether the modulation of plant immune response through knockdown of the Nb-SABP2 and Nb-COI1 N. benthamiana genes could improve recombinant protein yield. In plants, the SABP2 and COI1 proteins are involved in the salicylic acid and jasmonic acid metabolism, respectively.We exemplified the utility of this approach with the green fluorescence (GFP) and β nerve growth factor (βNGF) proteins: compared to the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV)-based vector the Nb-SABP2 and Nb-COI1-suppressed plants provided an increased recombinant protein accumulation. We also show that this strategy is extendable to the expression systems utilizing potato virus X (PVX) as the vector backbone: the enhanced amounts of βNGF were detected in the Nb-SABP2 and Nb-COI-depleted leaves co-infiltrated with the PVX-βNGF. These findings suggest that modulating host plant reaction to agrodelivery of expression vectors could be useful for improving transient foreign protein production in N. benthamiana.

    Keywords: Nicotiana benthamiana, Nb-COI1, Nb-SABP2, Plant defence response, Recombinant Proteins, transient expression

    Received: 24 Jun 2024; Accepted: 12 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kopertekh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Lilya Kopertekh, Institute for Biosafety in Plant Biotechnology, Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Julius Kühn-Institute, Quedlinburg, 06484, Germany

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