Dataset Information

Delivery of subunit vaccines in maize seed.

ABSTRACT: The use of recombinant gene technologies by the vaccine industry has revolutionized the way antigens are generated, and has provided safer, more effective means of protecting animals and humans against bacterial and viral pathogens. Viral and bacterial antigens for recombinant subunit vaccines have been produced in a variety of organisms. Transgenic plants are now recognized as legitimate sources for these proteins, especially in the developing area of oral vaccines, because antigens have been shown to be correctly processed in plants into forms that elicit immune responses when fed to animals or humans. Antigens expressed in maize (Zea mays) are particularly attractive since they can be deposited in the natural storage vessel, the corn seed, and can be conveniently delivered to any organism that consumes grain. We have previously demonstrated high level expression of the B-subunit of Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin and the spike protein of swine transmissible gastroenteritis in corn, and have demonstrated that these antigens delivered in the seed elicit protective immune responses. Here we provide additional data to support the potency, efficacy, and stability of recombinant subunit vaccines delivered in maize seed.

SUBMITTER: Lamphear BJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7127645 | biostudies-literature | 2002 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Delivery of subunit vaccines in maize seed.

Lamphear Barry J BJ Streatfield Stephen J SJ Jilka Joseph M JM Brooks Christopher A CA Barker Donna K DK Turner Debra D DD Delaney Donna E DE Garcia Martin M Wiggins Barry B Woodard Susan L SL Hood Elizabeth E EE Tizard Ian R IR Lawhorn Bruce B Howard John A JA

Journal of controlled release : official journal of the Controlled Release Society 20021201 1-3

The use of recombinant gene technologies by the vaccine industry has revolutionized the way antigens are generated, and has provided safer, more effective means of protecting animals and humans against bacterial and viral pathogens. Viral and bacterial antigens for recombinant subunit vaccines have been produced in a variety of organisms. Transgenic plants are now recognized as legitimate sources for these proteins, especially in the developing area of oral vaccines, because antigens have been s ...[more]

PMID: 12480322

Similar Datasets

Project description:BACKGROUND: A balanced composition of amino acids in seed flour is critical because of the demand on essential amino acids for nutrition. However, seed proteins in cereals like maize, the crop with the highest yield, are low in lysine, tryptophan, and methionine. Although supplementation with legumes like soybean can compensate lysine deficiency, both crops are also relatively low in methionine. Therefore, understanding the mechanism of methionine accumulation in the seed could be a basis for breeding cultivars with superior nutritional quality. RESULTS: In maize (Zea mays), the 22- and 19-kDa ?-zeins are the most prominent storage proteins, nearly devoid of lysine and methionine. Although silencing synthesis of these proteins through RNA interference (RNAi) raises lysine levels in the seed, it fails to do so for methionine. Computational analysis of annotated gene models suggests that about 57% of all proteins exhibit a lysine content of more than 4%, whereas the percentage of proteins with methionine above 4% is only around 8%. To compensate for this low representation, maize seeds produce specialized storage proteins, the 15-kDa ?-, 18-kDa and 10-kDa ?-zeins, rich in methionine. However, they are expressed at variant levels in different inbred lines. A654, an inbred with null ?-zein alleles, methionine levels are significantly lower than when the two intact ?-zein alleles are introgressed. Further silencing of ?-zein results in dramatic reduction in methionine levels, indicating that ?- and ?-zeins are the main sink of methionine in maize seed. Overexpression of the 10-kDa ?-zein can increase the methionine level, but protein analysis by SDS-PAGE shows that the increased methionine levels occur at least in part at the expense of cysteines present in ?- and ?-zeins. The reverse is true when ?- and ?-zein expression is silenced through RNAi, then 10-kDa ?-zein accumulates to higher levels. CONCLUSIONS: Because methionine receives the sulfur moiety from cysteine, it appears that when seed protein synthesis of cysteine-rich proteins is blocked, the synthesis of methionine-rich seed proteins is induced, probably at the translational level. The same is true, when methionine-rich proteins are overexpressed, synthesis of cysteine-rich proteins is reduced, probably also at the translational level. Although we only hypothesize a translational control of protein synthesis at this time, there are well known paradigms of how amino acid concentration can play a role in differential gene expression. The latter we think is largely controlled by the flux of reduced sulfur during plant growth.

Dataset Information

Delivery of subunit vaccines in maize seed.

Publications

Delivery of subunit vaccines in maize seed.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets