Search

For the past two decades, therapeutic and industrially important proteins have been expressed in plants with varying levels of success. The two major challenges hindering the economical production of plant-made recombinant proteins include inadequate accumulation levels and the lack of efficient purification methods. To address these limitations, several fusion protein strategies have been recently developed to significantly enhance the production yield of plant-made recombinant proteins, while simultaneously assisting in their subsequent purification. Elastin-like polypeptides are thermally responsive biopolymers composed of a repeating pentapeptide 'VPGXG' sequence that are valuable for the purification of recombinant proteins. Hydrophobins are small fungal proteins capable of altering the hydrophobicity of their respective fusion partner, thus enabling efficient purification by surfactant-based aqueous two-phase systems. Zera, a domain of the maize seed storage protein γ-zein, can induce the formation of protein storage bodies, thus facilitating the recovery of fused proteins using density-based separation methods. These three novel protein fusion systems have also been shown to enhance the accumulation of a range of different recombinant proteins, while concurrently inducing the formation of protein bodies. The packing of these fusion proteins into protein bodies may exclude the recombinant protein from normal physiological turnover. Furthermore, these systems allow for quick, simple and inexpensive nonchromatographic purification of the recombinant protein, which can be scaled up to industrial levels of protein production. This review will focus on the similarities and differences of these artificial storage organelles, their biogenesis and their implication for the production of recombinant proteins in plants and their subsequent purification.

The demand for recombinant proteins for medical and industrial use is expanding rapidly and plants are now recognized as an efficient, inexpensive means of production. Although the accumulation of recombinant proteins in transgenic plants can be low, we have previously demonstrated that fusions with an elastin‐like polypeptide (ELP) tag can significantly enhance the production yield of a range of different recombinant proteins in plant leaves. ELPs are biopolymers with a repeating pentapeptide sequence (VGVPG)n that are valuable for bioseparation, acting as thermally responsive tags for the non‐chromatographic purification of recombinant proteins. To determine the optimal ELP size for the accumulation of recombinant proteins and their subsequent purification, various ELP tags were fused to green fluorescent protein, interleukin‐10, erythropoietin and a single chain antibody fragment and then transiently expressed in tobacco leaves. Our results indicated that ELP tags with 30 pentapeptide repeats provided the best compromise between the positive effects of small ELP tags (n = 5–40) on recombinant protein accumulation and the beneficial effects of larger ELP tags (n = 80–160) on recombinant protein recovery during inverse transition cycling (ITC) purification. In addition, the C‐terminal orientation of ELP fusion tags produced higher levels of target proteins, relative to N‐terminal ELP fusions. Importantly, the ELP tags had no adverse effect on the receptor binding affinity of erythropoietin, demonstrating the inert nature of these tags. The use of ELP fusion tags provides an approach for enhancing the production of recombinant proteins in plants, while simultaneously assisting in their purification.