Transient expression using agroinfiltration and its applications in molecular farming

Abstract

Transient expression via agroinfiltration and/or viral vectors has quickly emerged as the preferred expression system for plant-made recombinant proteins. Transient expression can serve as a valuable research tool for finding optimal expression parameters before tedious and time-consuming production of stable transgenic plants or it can be scaled up to commercial production scale with vacuum infiltration. This technology is poised to compete with conventional production systems, large-scale production facilities are currently available and others are in the process of development. This chapter will introduce background and rationale in development of transient expression systems in plants and summarize the latest developments and examples in this area.