Transgene Biocontainment Strategies for Molecular Farming

Transgene introgression in crop relatives: molecular evidence and mitigation strategies.

Incorporation of crop genes into wild and weedy relative populations (i.e. introgression) has long been of interest to ecologists and weed scientists. Potential negative outcomes that result from crop transgene introgression (e.g. extinction of native wild relative populations; invasive spread by wild or weedy hosts) have not been documented, and few examples of transgene introgression exist. H...

Molecular Farming: Strategies, Expression Systems and Bio-Safety Considerations

Ahmad K. (2014): Molecular farming: strategies, expression systems and bio-safety considerations. Czech J. Genet. Plant Breed., 50: 1–10. Molecular farming is an experimental application of biotechnology that involves the genetic modification of crops for the production of proteins and chemicals for medicinal and commercial purposes. The vast majority in the developing world cannot afford the h...

Keeping the genie in the bottle: transgene biocontainment by excision in pollen.

Gene flow from transgenic plants is an environmental and regulatory concern. While biocontainment might be achieved using male sterility or transgenic mitigation tools, we believe that perhaps the optimal solution might be simply to remove transgenes from pollen. Male sterility might not be ideal for many pollinators, and might not be implementable using standardized genes. Transgenic mitigatio...

Advances in plant molecular farming.

Plant molecular farming (PMF) is a new branch of plant biotechnology, where plants are engineered to produce recombinant pharmaceutical and industrial proteins in large quantities. As an emerging subdivision of the biopharmaceutical industry, PMF is still trying to gain comparable social acceptance as the already established production systems that produce these high valued proteins in microbia...

Plant Breeding and Molecular Farming