This exciting volume Plants as Factories for Protein Production, edited by Drs. Elizabeth E. Hood and John A. Howard, contains chapters by experts in the field of molecular farming. The information within addresses the leading plant systems for recombinant protein production, as well as the progress being made in leading product categories - human pharmaceuticals, animal health, and industrial enzymes. More importantly, the book includes chapters that address the hot topics of production, containment, regulatory, and legal aspects that are quickly coming to the forefront of the industry. This most timely text is appropriate for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, as well as being a key text for faculty, pharmaceutical producers, and industrial enzyme users.

A single volume collection that surveys the exciting field of plant-made pharmaceuticals and industrial proteins This comprehensive book communicates the recent advances and exciting potential for the expanding area of plant biotechnology and is divided into six sections. The first three sections look at the current status of the field, and advances in plant platforms and strategies for improving yields, downstream processing, and controlling post-translational modifications of plant-made recombinant proteins. Section four reviews high-value industrial and pharmacological proteins that are successfully being produced in established and emerging plant platforms. The fifth section looks at regulatory challenges facing the expansion of the field. The final section turns its focus toward small molecule therapeutics, drug screening, plant specialized metabolites, and plants as model organisms to study human disease processes. Molecular Pharming: Applications, Challenges and Emerging Areas offers in-depth coverage of molecular biology of plant expression systems and manipulation of glycosylation processes in plants; plant platforms, subcellular targeting, recovery, and downstream processing; plant-derived protein pharmaceuticals and case studies; regulatory issues; and emerging areas. It is a valuable resource for researchers that are in the field of plant molecular pharming, as well as for those conducting basic research in gene expression, protein quality control, and other subjects relevant to molecular and cellular biology. Broad ranging coverage of a key area of plant biotechnology Describes efforts to produce pharmaceutical and industrial proteins in plants Provides reviews of recent advances and technology breakthroughs Assesses realities of regulatory and cost hurdles Forward looking with coverage of small molecule technologies and the use of plants as models of human disease processes Providing wide-ranging and unique coverage, Molecular Pharming: Applications, Challenges and Emerging Areas will be of great interest to the plant science, plant biotechnology, protein science, and pharmacological communities.

Gathering some 90 entries from the Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology, this book covers animal breeding and genetics for food, crop science and technology, ocean farming and sustainable aquaculture, transgenic livestock for food and more.

This book explores the journey of biotechnology, searching for new avenues and noting the impressive accomplishments to date. It has harmonious blend of facts, applications and new ideas. Fast-paced biotechnologies are broadly applied and are being continuously explored in areas like the environmental, industrial, agricultural and medical sciences. The sequencing of the human genome has opened new therapeutic opportunities and enriched the field of medical biotechnology while analysis of biomolecules using proteomics and microarray technologies along with the simultaneous discovery and development of new modes of detection are paving the way for ever-faster and more reliable diagnostic methods. Life-saving bio-pharmaceuticals are being churned out at an amazing rate, and the unraveling of biological processes has facilitated drug designing and discovery processes. Advances in regenerative medical technologies (stem cell therapy, tissue engineering, and gene therapy) look extremely promising, transcending the limitations of all existing fields and opening new dimensions for characterizing and combating diseases.

Plant gene transfer achieved in the early ‘80s paved the way for the exploitation of the potential of gene engineering to add novel agronomic traits and/or to design plants as factories for high added value molecules. For this latter area of research, the term "Molecular Farming" was coined in reference to agricultural applications in that major crops like maize and tobacco were originally used basically for pharma applications. The concept of the “green biofactory” implies different advantages over the typical cell factories based on animal cell or microbial cultures already when considering the investment and managing costs of fermenters. Although yield, stability, and quality of the molecules may vary among different heterologous systems and plants are competitive on a case-to-case basis, still the “plant factory” attracts scientists and technologists for the challenging features of low production cost, product safety and easy scale up. Once engineered, a plant is among the cheapest and easiest eukaryotic system to be bred with simple know-how, using nutrients, water and light. Molecules that are currently being produced in plants vary from industrial and pharmaceutical proteins, including medical diagnostics proteins and vaccine antigens, to nutritional supplements such as vitamins, carbohydrates and biopolymers. Convergence among disciplines as distant as plant physiology and pharmacology and, more recently, as omic sciences, bioinformatics and nanotechnology, increases the options of research on the plant cell factory. “Farming for Pharming” biologics and small-molecule medicines is a challenging area of plant biotechnology that may break the limits of current standard production technologies. The recent success on Ebola fighting with plant-made antibodies put a spotlight on the enormous potential of next generation herbal medicines made especially in the name of the guiding principle of reduction of costs, hence reduction of disparities of health rights and as a tool to guarantee adequate health protection in developing countries.

Molecular farming in plants is a relatively young subject of sciences. As plants can offer an inexpensive and convenient platform for the large-scale production of recombinant proteins with various functions, the driven force from the giant market for recombinant protein pharmaceuticals and industrial enzymes makes this subject grow and advance very quickly. To summarize recent advances, current challenges and future directions in molecular farming, international authorities were invited to write this book for researchers, teachers and students who are interested in this subject. This book, with the focus on the most advanced cutting-edge breakthroughs, covers all the essential aspects of the field of molecular farming in plants: from expression technologies to downstream processing, from products to safety issues, and from current advances and holdups to future developments.

The second part of the book focuses on codon usage bias.