Mature Amaranthus hypochondriacus seeds contain non-processed 11S precursors.

Amaranth is a dicotyledonous plant whose major seed storage proteins are globulins and glutelins. An unique feature of amaranth seeds is the presence of a fraction named albumin-2, that is extractable with water only after an exhaustive extraction of globulins and albumin-1. In this work, we tested the hypothesis that albumin-2 fraction could be constituted by a non-processed 11S globulin (proglobulin).

Two short sequences from amaranth 11S globulin are sufficient to target green fluorescent protein and beta-glucuronidase to vacuoles in Arabidopsis cells.

Vacuolar sorting of seed storage proteins is a very complex process since several sorting pathways and interactions among proteins of different classes have been reported. In addition, although the C-terminus of several 7S proteins is important for vacuolar delivery, other signals seem also to be involved in this process. In this work, the ability of two sequences of the Amaranthus hypochondriacus 11S globulin (amaranthin) to target reporter proteins to vacuoles was studied.

A KDEL-tagged monoclonal antibody is efficiently retained in the endoplasmic reticulum in leaves, but is both partially secreted and sorted to protein storage vacuoles in seeds.

Transgenic plants are attractive biological systems for the large-scale production of pharmaceutical proteins. In particular, seeds offer special advantages, such as ease of handling and long-term stable storage. Nevertheless, most of the studies of the expression of antibodies in plants have been performed in leaves.

Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of the ectomycorrhizal symbiont Laccaria bicolor S238N.

The development of an efficient transformation system is required to alter the expression of symbiosis-regulated genes and to develop insertional mutagenesis in the ectomycorrhizal basidiomycete Laccaria bicolor S238N. Vegetative mycelium of this fungus was transformed by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated gene transfer. The selection marker was the hygromycin resistance gene of Escherichia coli (hph) under the control of the gpd promoter from Agaricus bisporus and the CaMV 35S terminator as part of the T-DNA.