3-hydroxypropionic acid, a value-added bulk chemical from glycerol

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 35 KB
• Volume: 104
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0006-3592
• DOI: 10.1002/bit.22511

✦ Synopsis

Monoclonal antibodies have long been considered the Holy Grail of protein expression platforms and in the current issue for the first time Tran and co-workers show that algal chloroplasts have the necessary machinery to express, fold and more importantly assemble a functional human antibody. The authors show that algal-expressed antibodies have similar binding properties to genetically identical antibodies expressed in mammalian cell culture. Algae are capable of growing on minimal media using CO 2 as their primary carbon source and grow at an unmatched scale thus giving them a dramatic cost advantage when compared to other expression systems. With the advent of this new algal biotechnology it may be possible to make antibody therapy more widely accessible to patients in need and potentially make antibodies inexpensive enough for prophylactic purposes.