Enhancing Vegetative Protein Production in Transgenic Plants Using Seed Specific Promoters

Abstract

In various embodiments, the invention provides expression systems for heterologous protein expression in vegetative plant tissues, utilizing plant seed gene components that are adapted to orchestrate high levels of vegetative protein production. The expression systems may include host plant cells having recombinant genomes, and the plant cells may be maintained under protein expressing conditions, for example in tissue culture. The cells may be induced to express an ABI3 transcription factor, for example by transformation with a vector having a constitutive ABI3 expression cassette. The recombinant sequences in operative linkage may include an integrated expression promoter responsive to the ABI3 transcription factor, such as an arcelin gene promoter, a vicilin gene promoter and a napin gene promoter. A 5′ untranslated region may include a region of an ABA responsive plant seed gene or an ABI3 responsive plant seed gene. A plant secretion signal peptide coding sequence may be included. An integrated heterologous protein coding region, encoding a recombinant protein, may be provided in an open reading frame with the signal peptide coding sequence. A 3′ untranslated region may be provided having a polyadenylation signal.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.