Comparison of transient expression vectors for production of recombinant proteins in plants

Production of recombinant proteins in plants is getting more and more importance not only in plants research field but also in the field of medicines. Transient expression vectors are efficient tools for this purpose. To date, a large number of such vectors have been constructed. Each of these is reported to be highly efficient, robust and cost effective which makes it difficult to choose the best vector. We have therefore, undertaken a comparative analysis of a variety of available transient expression vectors. These included the vectors pJLTRBO, pPZP3425, pEAQ-HT, and pBY030-2R. In addition, we transferred the TMV expression cassette from pJLTRBO, which is a single copy vector, into the pPZP vector backbone. This vector was called pPZP5000. We compared the expression of GUS and GFP in Nicotiana benthamiana by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. We found that pJLTRBO and pPZP5000 had a comparable expression level without RNAi inhibitor. The other vectors needed co-infiltration of an RNAi inhibitor expression construct to give good expression levels. The only vector which is not based on a virus genome, pPZP3425, gave also satisfactory results.