and important epidemic and pandemic diseases, focussing on recent outbreaks of high-mortality coronavirus infections and diseases that disproportionately affect the developing world.
The fight against infectious diseases often focuses on epidemics and pandemics, which demand urgent resources and command attention from the health authorities and media. However, the vast majority of deaths caused by infectious diseases occur in endemic zones, particularly in developing countries, placing a disproportionate burden on underfunded health systems and often requiring international interventions. The provision of vaccines and other biologics is hampered not only by the high cost and limited scalability of traditional manufacturing platforms based on microbial and animal cells, but also by challenges caused by distribution and storage, particularly in regions without a complete cold chain. In this review article, we consider the
Cork oaks show a high capacity of bud sprouting as a response to injury, which is important for species survival when dealing with external factors, such as drought or fires. The characterization of the cork oak transcriptome involved in the different stages of bud sprouting is essential to understanding the mechanisms involved in these processes. In this study, the transcriptional profile of different stages of bud sprouting, namely (1) dormant bud and (2) bud swollen, vs. (3) red bud and (4) open bud, was analyzed in trees growing under natural conditions. The transcriptome analysis indicated the involvement of genes related with energy production (linking the TCA (tricarboxylic acid) cycle and the electron transport system), hormonal regulation, water status, and synthesis of polysaccharides. These results pinpoint the different mechanisms involved in the early and later stages of bud sprouting. Furthermore, some genes, which are involved in bud development and conserved between species, were also identified at the transcriptional level. This study provides the first set of results that will be useful for the discovery of genes related with the mechanisms regulating bud sprouting in cork oak.
The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the worldwide spread of SARS-CoV-2, has prompted the scientific community to rapidly develop efficient and specific diagnostics and therapeutics. A number of avenues have been explored, including the manufacture of COVID-related proteins to be used as reagents for diagnostics or treatment. The production of RBD and Spike proteins was previously achieved in eukaryotic cells, mainly mammalian cell cultures, while the production in microbial systems has been unsuccessful until now. Here we report the effective production of SARS-CoV-2 proteins in two plant model systems. We established transgenic tobacco BY-2 and Medicago truncatula A17 cell suspension cultures stably producing the full-length Spike and RBD recombinant proteins. For both proteins, various glycoforms were obtained, with higher yields in Medicago cultures than BY-2. This work highlights that RBD and Spike can be secreted into the culture medium, which will impact subsequent purification and downstream processing costs. Analysis of the culture media indicated the presence of the high molecular weight Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. Although the production yields still need improvement to compete with mammalian systems, this is the first report showing that plant cell suspension cultures are able to produce the high molecular weight Spike protein. This finding strengthens the potential of plant cell cultures as production platforms for large complex proteins.
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