Virus-Based Vectors: A New Approach for Production of Recombinant Proteins

Abstract

Recombinant proteins have become one of the basic human needs today for pharmaceutical, industrial and research purposes. The conventional methods of producing recombinant proteins, including bacterial systems, yeast, and human cells, have led to rising prices and biosafety problems for these products. Research on commercial production of recombinant proteins prompted a new method based on plant RNA viruses and plant hosts, which is known as transient expression system. Accordingly, a viral vector based on the plant RNA virus genome was designed in which the target gene is placed underneath a viral subgenomic promoter. In these vectors, despite the genetic manipulation, the ability to infect the entire plant that was present in the virus was preserved and, several days after plant infestation, it became bioreactor for the production of recombinant protein. The advances made in this field led to the creation of hybrid vectors based on plant viruses and Agrobacterium T-DNA (Transfer DNA). The amount of recombinant protein produced by these vectors was up to 5 g/kg of fresh weight, which is considered a reliable record. The abundant benefits of this method have attracted the attention of researchers. Some of the benefits include: the rapid and high production rate, reduced production costs and the bio-safety of the manufactured products. Several recombinant drugs are currently produced by the transient expression system, either delivered to the consumer or by clinical trials. This review presents how to discover, creation and development of viral vectors in transient expression systems in order to produce recombinant proteins.

Plant-Derived Recombinant Vaccines against Zoonotic Viruses

“…Transient expression in plants provides a higher yield of recombinant proteins within a shorter timeline than the stable modified plants and has been used successfully as a rapid response platform addressing emerging viral diseases such as Influenza and COVID 19. The production of recombinant proteins using transient expression based on RNA viral vectors has gained wide popularity due to numerous advantages: simple and easy engineering, high level of production of the protein of interest, scalability, lower risk, and lower costs [41]. Mainly small (+) RNA viruses such as tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) [42], cowpea mosaic virus (CMV) [43], and potato virus X (PVX) [40] are utilized as viral vectors for commercial protein production [44,45].…”

Current Status and Perspective on the Use of Viral-Based Vectors in Eukaryotic Microalgae

“…Using Agrobacterium for DNA delivery offers considerable advantages given the efficient transfer capacity by infiltration of plant leaves. Plants species using this approach include spinach, sunflower, red beetroot, and N. benthamiana, presenting maximum yields up to 50% of TSP in a 4–5 day period where the size of the GO can be up to 2 Kb and proteins of 80 KDa can be produced [ 167 , 168 , 169 ].…”

Maximizing the Production of Recombinant Proteins in Plants: From Transcription to Protein Stability

“…Second, production of mature viral particles including virus coat proteins in infected plants not only utilizes plant host resource but also poses potential biohazard for production of recombinant proteins. To overcome these problems, new deconstructed viral vectors have been developed [ 38 ]. These new viral vectors are Agrobacterium binary vectors whose T-DNA regions contain viral replicons with the transgenes to be expression but devoid of those limiting or undesirable viral genes [ 31 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ] ( Figure 1 ).…”