Comparative Evaluation of Recombinant Protein Production in Different Biofactories: The Green Perspective

Table 2

Best-performing plant-based platforms for the production of four selected recombinant pharmaceutical proteins.

Plant host	Plant organ	Recombinant protein	Expression system	Highest expression level	Plants/g recombinant protein	Reference
Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum)	Leaves	hGAD65mut	Transgenic	0.14 mg/g LFW	^193	[23]
		NVCP	Transgenic	0.2% TSP	ND	[41]
		IL6_KDEL	Transgenic	0.11 mg/g LFW	^1119	[108]
		2G12/2G12_KDEL	Transient (binary vector)	0.1 mg/g LFW	^1133	[78]
	Seeds	hGAD67/65mut	Transgenic	0.4 mg/g DSW	^11250	[26]
		IL6_KDEL	Transgenic	0.3 mg/g DSW	^11667	[108]
		2G12_KDEL/ELP	Transgenic	1.0% TSP	ND	[80]
Nicotiana benthamiana	Leaves	hGAD65mut	Transient (MagnICON vectors)	0.1 mg/g LFW	^23451	[23]
		NVCP (VP1 and VP2)	Transient (binary vector)	1 mg/g FLW	^2333	[57]
		IL6_KDEL	Transient (MagnICON vectors)	7.8% TSP	ND	[108]
		2G12_KDEL	Transient (viral vector)	0.12 mg/g LFW	^22693	[79]
Arabidopsis thaliana	Seeds	hGAD67/65mut	Transgenic	4.5 mg/g DSW	^3308	[26]
		2G12	Transgenic	3.6 mg/g DSW	^3385	[75]
	Leaves	2G12	Transgenic	0.2% TSP	ND	[73]
Maize (Zea mays)	Seeds	2G12	Transgenic	>0.1 mg/g DSW	ND	[76]
Lettuce (Lactuca sativa)	Leaves	NVCP	Transient (viral vector)	0.2 mg/g LFW	ND	[56]
Petunia (Petunia hybrida)	Seeds	hGAD67/65mut	Transgenic	0.2 mg/g DSW	ND	[26]
Carrot (Daucus carota)	Taproots	hGAD65	Transgenic	0.01% TSP	ND	[22]
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii		hGAD65	Transgenic	0.3% TSP	ND	[20]
Potato plant (Lycopersicon esculentum)	Fruits	NVCP	Transgenic	0.16 mg/g fruit weight	^40.6	[53]
Tomato (Solanum tuberosum)	Tubers	NVCP	Transgenic	0.12 mg/g tuber weight	ND	[53]

The highest expression levels are reported as mass of recombinant protein per unit of biomass (LFW: leaves, fresh weight; DSW: dry seed weight) unless these values were not available, in which case percentage total soluble protein (%TSP) is used instead. The recombinant protein productivity values were calculated by considering the seed or leaf biomass yield per plant (¹[115]; ²[59]; ³ [116]; ⁴ Mississippi State University website: http://msucares.com/crops/comhort/yield.html). ND: not determined (values were not calculated because of the absence of productivity data or the expression data were reported as %TSP).