Plant Serine Protease Inhibitors: Biotechnology Application in Agriculture and Molecular Farming.

The serine protease inhibitors (SPIs) are widely distributed in living organisms like bacteria, fungi, plants, and humans. The main function of SPIs as protease enzymes is to regulate the proteolytic activity. In plants, most of the studies of SPIs have been focused on their physiological role. The initial studies carried out in plants showed that SPIs participate in the regulation of endogenous proteolytic processes, as the regulation of proteases in seeds. Besides, it was observed that SPIs also participate in the regulation of cell death during plant development and senescence. On the other hand, plant SPIs have an important role in plant defense against pests and phytopathogenic microorganisms. In the last 20 years, several transgenic plants over-expressing SPIs have been produced and tested in order to achieve the increase of the resistance against pathogenic insects. Finally, in molecular farming, SPIs have been employed to minimize the proteolysis of recombinant proteins expressed in plants. The present review discusses the potential biotechnological applications of plant SPIs in the agriculture field.

Characterization of a novel Kazal-type serine proteinase inhibitor of Arabidopsis thaliana.

Many different types of serine proteinase inhibitors have been involved in several kinds of plant physiological processes, including defense mechanisms against phytopathogens. Kazal-type serine proteinase inhibitors, which are included in the serine proteinase inhibitor family, are present in several organisms. These proteins play a regulatory role in processes that involve serine proteinases like trypsin, chymotrypsin, thrombin, elastase and/or subtilisin. In the present work, we characterized two putative Kazal-type serine proteinase inhibitors from Arabidopsis thaliana, which have a single putative Kazal-type domain. The expression of these inhibitors is transiently induced in response to leaf infection by Botrytis cinerea, suggesting that they play some role in defense against pathogens. We also evaluated the inhibitory specificity of one of the Kazal-type serine proteinase inhibitors, which resulted to be induced during the local response to B. cinerea infection. The recombinant Kazal-type serine proteinase inhibitor displayed high specificity for elastase and subtilisin, but low specificity for trypsin, suggesting differences in its selectivity. In addition, this inhibitor exhibited a strong antifungal activity inhibiting the germination rate of B. cinerea conidia in vitro. Due to the important role of proteinase inhibitors in plant protection against pathogens and pests, the information about Kazal-type proteinase inhibitors described in the present work could contribute to improving current methods for plant protection against pathogens.

The fusion of Toxoplasma gondii SAG1 vaccine candidate to Leishmania infantum heat shock protein 83-kDa improves expression levels in tobacco chloroplasts.

Chloroplast transformation technology has emerged as an alternative platform offering many advantages over nuclear transformation. SAG1 is the main surface antigen of the intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii and a promising candidate to produce an anti-T. gondii vaccine. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of SAG1 using chloroplast transformation technology in tobacco plants. In order to improve expression in transplastomic plants, we also expressed the 90-kDa heat shock protein of Leishmania infantum (LiHsp83) as a carrier for the SAG1 antigen. SAG1 protein accumulation in transplastomic plants was approximately 0.1-0.2 µg per gram of fresh weight (FW). Fusion of SAG1 to LiHsp83 significantly increased the level of SAG1 accumulation in tobacco chloroplasts (by up to 500-fold). We also evaluated the functionality of the chLiHsp83-SAG1. Three human seropositive samples reacted with SAG1 expressed in transplastomic chLiHsp83-SAG1 plants. Oral immunization with chLiHsp83-SAG1 elicited a significant reduction of the cyst burden that correlated with an increase of SAG1-specific antibodies. We propose the fusion of foreign proteins to LiHsp83 as a novel strategy to increase the expression level of the recombinant proteins using chloroplast transformation technology, thus addressing one of the current challenges for this approach in antigen protein production.