Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers have long been pursued to meet clinical needs by using native hemoglobin (Hb) from human or animal blood, recombinantly produced Hb, but the development has impeded safety and toxicity issues. Herewith we report successful production of fetal (HbF) in Nicotiana benthamiana through Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transient expression. HbF is a heterotetrameric...

G-negative bacteria produce myriad N-acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs) that can function as quorum sensing (QS) signaling molecules. AHLs are also known to regulate various plant biological activities. p-Coumaroyl-homoserine lactone (pC-HSL) is the only QS molecule produced by a photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas palustris. The role of pC-HSL in interaction between R. palustris and has no...

background: the potential of plants as a safe and eukaryotic systems, are considered for producing recombinant therapeutic human protein today; but the expression level of heterologous proteins is limited by the post-transcriptional gene silencing (ptgs) response in this new technology. the use of viral suppressors of gene silencing can prevent ptgs and improve transient expression level of for...

microRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of endogenous small RNAs (sRNAs) that play pivotal roles in plant development, abiotic stress response, and pathogen response. miRNAs have been extensively studied in plants, but rarely in Nicotiana benthamiana, despite its wide use in plant virology studies, particularly for studying N protein-tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) interactions. We report an efficient method...

Mutations have been inserted into the virion and complementary sense ORFs encoding proteins with M(r)s in excess of 9 kDa of both DNA A and DNA B of potato yellow mosaic geminivirus (PYMV). Wild-type and mutant monomeric clones were tested for their ability to replicate, produce PYMV-specific DNA, spread and cause symptoms in Nicotiana benthamiana plants following biolistic inoculation. Dimeric...

BACKGROUND Viral small RNAs (vsiRNAs) in the infected host can be generated from viral double-stranded RNA replicative intermediates, self-complementary regions of the viral genome or from the action of host RNA-dependent RNA polymerases on viral templates. The vsiRNA abundance and profile as well as the endogenous small RNA population can vary between different hosts infected by the same virus...

BACKGROUND RNA interference (RNAi) is a valuable reverse genetics tool to study gene function in various organisms, including hemipteran insects such as aphids. Previous work has shown that RNAi-mediated knockdown of pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) genes can be achieved through direct injection of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) or small-interfering RNAs (siRNA) into the pea aphid hemolymph or by f...

BACKGROUND Beet severe curly top virus (BSCTV) is a leafhopper transmitted geminivirus with a monopartite genome. C4 proteins encoded by geminivirus play an important role in virus/plant interaction. METHODS AND FINDINGS To understand the function of C4 encoded by BSCTV, two BSCTV mutants were constructed by introducing termination codons in ORF C4 without affecting the amino acids encoded by...

Plants have attracted attention as bio-drug production platforms because of their economical and safety benefits. The preliminary efficacy of ZMapp, a cocktail of antibodies produced in N. benthamiana (Nicotiana benthamiana L.), suggested plants may serve as a platform for antibody production. However, because the amino acid sequences of the Fab fragment are diverse and differences in post-tran...

RNA silencing is a sequence specific post-transcriptional mechanism regulating important biological processes including antiviral defense in plants. Argonaute (AGO) proteins, the catalytic subunits of complexes, are loaded with small RNAs to execute cleavage or translational inhibition. Plants encode several AGO proteins and few them, especially AGO1 AGO2, have been shown be required for silenc...