Research Seminar presented by Sean Ratcliffe

Title: Optimised light quality for functional protein expression in plants

Abstract

Molecular farming is a recent field that aims to produce high-value transient proteins using a host organism. Target proteins are typically therapeutic antibodies or industrial grade enzymes. There are competitive processes to accomplish this, of which plant-based transient expression has grown in popularity. Plantform Corporation is a Guelph based start-up using this technique with a wild tobacco variety in combination with a process called agro-infiltration. This uses a modified agro-bacterium media and vacuum pumps to deliver the DNA that codes for the protein into the plant tissue to begin translation. As plant development is highly sensitive to environmental variables it follows that transient expression inside a plant would be equally sensitive. The Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility (CESRF) has equipment uniquely capable of environmental manipulations to measure the protein expression response to changing growth conditions. There are valuable questions to be answered in this area, this proposed work aims to determine if light quality is a considerable factor for transient protein expression in an agro-infiltrated plant-based system.

Everyone is welcome to attend

(This is a Research Proposal presentation by students in ENVS*6900)