title: Transient Expression Systems in Plants: Potentialities and Constraints.
abstract: Plants have been used from old to extract and isolate by different means the products of interest that they store. In recent years new techniques have emerged that allow the use of plants as factories to overexpress transiently and often efficiently, specific genes of interest, either endogenous or foreign, in their native form or modified. These techniques allow and facilitate the targeted purification of gene products for research and commercial purposes without resorting to lengthy, time-consuming and sometimes challenging plant stable transformations, while avoiding some of their associated regulatory constraints. In this chapter we describe the main strategies available for the transient expression of gene sequences and their encoded products in plants. We discuss biological issues affecting transient expression, including resistance responses elicited by the plant against sequences that it recognizes naturally as foreign, and ways to neutralize them. We also discuss the relative advantages of each expression strategy as well as their inherent drawbacks and technical limitations, and how to partially prevent or overcome them, whenever possible.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB, CSIC), Ramiro de Maeztu 9, 28040, Madrid, Spain. tomas.canto@cib.csic.es.
authors.forename: Tomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Canto
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D018014:Gene Transfer Techniques; D005822:Genetic Vectors; D006801:Humans; D046912:Multiprotein Complexes; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D010942:Plant Viruses / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D015202:Protein Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D020836:Protein Structure, Quaternary; D021122:Protein Subunits; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D013997:Time Factors; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D046912:Multiprotein Complexes; D010940:Plant Proteins; D021122:Protein Subunits; D011994:Recombinant Proteins
keywords: Transient expression by agroinfiltration; Transient expression from plant virus vectors; Transient expression in plants by biolistic bombardment; Transient expression systems in plants