Developing plants as an expression system for mammalian ion channels

Membrane proteins are the target for approximately two thirds of currently marketed pharmaceuticals, and they play critical roles in infection and immunity in both animals and plants.

Progress in drug development would be substantially accelerated if more human membrane protein structures could be determined, but this is a significant challenge; one of the many problems encountered when working with eukaryotic membrane proteins is low expression yield, in particular a low yield of correctly folded and stable protein.

The best currently available expression systems for eukaryotic membrane proteins (mammalian and insect cell culture) are expensive to use and prone to infection, and so the development of a widely available and cheap system would be of significant benefit. Plants represent a potential solution to this challenge; they are cheap to grow, they can produce massive yields, and, by using a model experimental system such as Arabidopsis thaliana or Nicotiana benthamiana, there are a vast array of molecular tools already in place to simplify the cloning and expression of proteins.

For more information on this project, please see the following link: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research/programmes/project/developing-plants-as-an-expression-system-for-mammalian-ion-channels