introduction to methodology

We all hear the terms "transgenic" and "genetically-modified" thrown about, but what does it actually mean? And how do they manage to express animal proteins like antibodies and cytokines within a plant system, a system that is so widely different from our own bodies? The truth is, biological organisms differ less than people may think. Plants are actually much more sophisticated systems for the expression of human compounds than the popular animal and bacterial systems used today[1].

This section will attempt to illustrate briefly how researchers and industries make recombinant proteins for immunotherapy in transgenic plants.

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references

1) Ma JK, Drake PM, Christou P. The production of recombinant pharmaceutical proteins in plants. Nat Rev Genet 2003, 4:794-805.