Rice has been engineered to contain Japanese encephalitis virus envelope protein. - GreenMedInfo Summary
Generation and immunogenicity of Japanese encephalitis virus envelope protein expressed in transgenic rice.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2009 Mar 6;380(2):292-7. Epub 2009 Jan 21. PMID: 19166811
Laboratory of Animal Virology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, 1 Shi-zi-shan Street, Wuhan 430070, PR China.
Transgenic plants have become attractive as bioreactors to produce heterologous proteins that can be developed as edible vaccines. In the present study, transgenic rice expressing the envelope protein (E) of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), under the control of a dual cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV 35S) promoter, was generated by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Southern blot, Northern blot, Western blot and ELISA analyses confirmed that the E gene was integrated into transgenic rice and was expressed in the leaves at levels of 1.1-1.9 microg/mg of total soluble protein. After intraperitoneal immunization of mice with crude protein extracts from transgenic rice plants, JEV-specific neutralizing antibody could be detected. Moreover, E-specific mucosal immune responses could be detected in mice after oral immunization with protein extracts from transgenic rice plants. These results show the potential of using a transgenic rice-based expression system as an alternative bioreactor for JEV subunit vaccine.