Tissue culture media, protein recovery

Proteins produced in plant cells can remain within the cell or are secreted into the apoplast via the bulk transport (secretory) pathway. In whole plants, because levels of protein accumulated intracellularly, e. g. using the KDEL sequence to ensure retention in the endoplasmic reticulum, are often higher than when the product is secreted [58], foreign proteins are generally not directed for secretion. However, as protein purification from plant biomass is potentially much more difficult and expensive than protein recovery from culture medium, protein secretion is considered an advantage in tissue culture systems. For economic harvesting from the medium, the protein should be stable once secreted and should accumulate to high levels in the extracellular environment. 

As well as overcoming many of the inherent problems associated with agriculture, plant tissue culture also offers a number of advantages over conventional animal cell culture methods currently being applied to produce biopharmaceutical proteins commercially [8], As plant culture media are relatively simple in composition and do not contain proteins, the cost of the process raw materials is reduced and protein recovery from the medium is easier and cheaper compared with animal cell culture. In addition, as most plant pathogens are unable to infect humans, the risk of pathogenic infections being transferred from the cell culture via the product is also substantially reduced. 

In this review, we focus on the use of plant tissue culture to produce foreign proteins that have direct commercial or medical applications. The development of large-scale plant tissue culture systems for the production of biopharmaceutical proteins requires efficient, high-level expression of stable, biologically active products. To minimize the cost of protein recovery and purification, it is preferable that the expression system releases the product in a form that can be harvested from the culture medium. In addition, the relevant bioprocessing issues associated with bioreactor culture of plant cells and tissues must be addressed. 

The recovery and purification of a bioproduct is carried out to isolate it from its production system (cell culture, plant or animal tissues), and to obtain the required purity and formulation. Before establishing a strategy for recovery and purification, it is essential to collect all available information related to the protein and to the medium where it is found. Usually, not only the theoretical information, but also preliminary experiments are needed. It is also noted that the feasibility of a process on a laboratory scale does not guarantee its feasibility on an industrial scale. 

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