Plant Viral Vectors as a Tool for Recombinant Vaccine Production

Over the last few years the development of plant viral vectors for protein expression has made rapid and impressive progress. Plant viruses are versatile vectors for production of proteins since they are easy to manipulate, quick to evaluate and offer the possibility of great production yields. They are particularly powerful expression systems for the production of recombinant proteins and peptides for vaccination, since they are able to produce antigens alone or conjugated to viral capsid. Several viral vectors have been developed for vaccine production, mainly Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and Potato virus X (PVX). In this review, we will discuss the advantages of the use of plant viral vectors as expression vectors, the principal vectors that have been developed to date, and the different strategies used for expression, with emphasis on recent research conducted in Argentina. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________