Antibody Production in Plants

The large-scale diversity of plant species offers many captivating possibilities of utilizing their genetic resources. Because of the advancement of plant biotechnological techniques, production of proteins of heterologous nature has grabbed attention in the past two decades. Most importantly, production of antibodies of plant origin, popularly known as “plantibodies,” has become gradually efficient. Plants are now regarded as an alternate platform for expression of recombinant antibodies production due to the diversification and advancement of various molecular biology techniques. After the discovery of first plant-based antibody in tobacco, molecular biologists and plant breeders paved a way toward the development of antibody fragments and full-length antibodies using transgenic approaches. However, due to several challenging tasks, questions related to their expression, accumulation, and cellular targeting still needs to be explored for large-scale production.