Biological Activity of Target Molecules

Much progress has been made in the development of plant virus expression vectors over the last decade and they can now be regarded as commercially viable systems 

Studies have shown that plants can make biologically active recombinant proteins through both transgenic and transient expression approaches. Although the plant post-translational machinery is similar to that of mammalian cells, there are some notable differences, e.g. differences in glycosylation, particularly the absence of sia-lation, which may impact the activity of certain proteins. The absence of mammalian enzymes may prevent complex maturation processes that are critical for the biological activity of proteins such as insulin. Fortunately these shortcomings affect the activity of only a limited number of proteins. 

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