Research Accomplishment Reports 2007

Field Evaluation of a Transgene Containment Strategy for Plant-made Pharmaceuticals in Tobacco

Davies, H. M., O. Chambers, C.N. Stewart
Department of Plant and Soil Sciences

 

Project Description

Progress has been made on Objective 1: Produce an interspecific hybrid Nicotiana plant expressing genes for fluorescent-protein tags that will facilitate tracking of its pollen and whole plants. Seeds of the required germplasm were provided to the University of Tennessee team. Tissue culture and transformation experiments have begun with the whole-plant GFP vectors that exist. Tissue culture and transformation is facile for Nicotiana tabacum, but techniques are being established for Nicotiana glauca. Seeds of one of the genotypes that are being transformed were heavily contaminated and an unusually long amount of time had to be spent in decontamination of explants. One of the two pollen-RFP vectors has been produced, but the other pollen-RFP vector has taken longer than we anticipated to be built. Potential sites (in Kentucky and Tennessee) for the location of the large-scale field plantings required in the later stages of the project have been sought and tentatively identified.

Impact

There is considerable interest in using plants as manufacturing systems for pharmaceutical and industrial protein products. Such transgenic crops that accumulate non-native proteins and harbor the corresponding genes must not be able to transfer those genes to the equivalent conventional crops. This project examines a genetic strategy for obviating, or greatly reducing the potential for, this 'gene flow' when tobacco plants are used as the production system. The work conducted in the project to-date is an essential initial part of the overall study, generating the specially 'tagged' plants that will be used to evaluate the genetic containment strategy which is our primary objective.