Plant based HIV-1 vaccine candidate: Tat protein produced in spinach.

The HIV-1 Tat protein has been recently explored as a prospective vaccine candidate with broad, subtype non-specific action. We approached the problem of delivery of Tat through the mucosal route by expressing Tat in an edible plant. The tat gene was assembled from synthetic overlapping oligonucleotides, and was subsequently cloned into a plant virus-based vector tobacco mosaic virus (TMV).